One question for Christians

[Bad Writer]

Assuming that they're right in the first place is fallacious. Why is this mode of thinking looked down upon? Do we not assume innocence until proven guilty?

You sir have the patience of a saint. You have concisely raised
irreconcilable objections. I really enjoyed reading such carefully worded thoughts. Bravo!

Thank you, but I object to being compared to a saint

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I was getting near the end of my post last night, and I found a goof from then. Let me reword this:

You can disbelieve all you want, but things that demonstrably exist, such as Buddhism, must be recognized as real (no belief or faith necessary). Atheism and agnosticism are real, and since they have no tenets, there is nothing to disbelieve, since they are merely statements of disbelief themselves.

I should say that ideas are demonstrably true. I'm not at all saying that Buddhism's tenets are true. I was making sure SW understood what disbelieving required, and since Atheism, Anti-Theism, and Agnosticism do not have tenets, they cannot even be disbelieved, as they are merely ideas that truly exist.

[Statler Waldorf]

Offense is taken, not given, though I will admit that I like to ruffle feathers a bit. If you feel like I'm compromising this guy's genius status, then maybe I am. Besides, all you've proven to me is that he's good at writing articles, and he is really damn good at chess. As far as subscribing to something that may or may not be true...that doesn't sound very smart to me.

A person doesn’t get published in the most prestigious scientific journal in the world at the age of 22 by merely being “good at writing articles”. He’s an excellent scientist.

And yes, he’s a beast on the chess board



I’ve actually emailed him a few articles to look at in the past and he’s always been really gracious and helpful in his replies.

A man built his house out of straw for stability, but the wind still blew it down. I could have a stable deck of cards, but a breath of air can topple it.

Not sure what your point is, the dimensions for the ark are consistent with an extremely stable vessel. This isn’t like the Gilgamesh story where the boat is a cube.

You don't have to like it, but the point I'm making is that it's all conjecture....so yes, it's a point.

As is asserting the story isn’t feasible, if you’re allowed to make conjectures about how much poop would have been aboard the ark then I am allowed to make conjectures about how a person could deal with the poop. Fair is fair.

So what's "more than enough time" mean? How many years are we talking about? Ballpark.

We can infer from scripture that Noah had between 55 and 75 years to build the Ark depending upon how old his sons were when he began construction.

Don't twist my words! Of course Isaak has to speculate on what the conditions had to be like for the flood to have occurred, but those aren't the reasons why he doesn't believe the flood. He's providing other ways of looking at things in order to think critically about an outrageous claim like saying the Noah's Ark story is true.

And Sarfati has demonstrated the claim is not really that outrageous, the Ark account in Genesis is very feasible thanks to advancements in our understanding of plate tectonics and speciation through Natural Selection. The more we learn the more feasible the story becomes.

What I'm saying that he doesn't speculate about are the things that Isaak does believe in. As for wasting everyone's time, it all depends on what you consider a waste. I suppose if he got you to read his arguments, don't you think he probably thinks of that as a win, even if he didn't convince you?

Why would he present arguments that were already refuted in the very book he is supposed to be countering? That’s just downright sloppy scholarship.

I never claimed to know. I'm definitely saying that we can't know this for a fact. We can't know any of this for a fact. We have to trust a 2000 year old text, and that's why I don't believe in it. Why don't we trust the "Epic of Gilgamesh"?

I do trust portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh; it’s obviously a corrupted account of a real event, namely the flood in Genesis. Cultures all around the world have stories of a great flood; the best explanation for this is that a great flood did occur at some point in time. Did you know that the Mandarin Chinese character for “Boat” is a compilation of three other symbols? These symbols are, “vessel”, “eight”, “people”. Eight people aboard a vessel sounds familiar.

Asserting they went without meat is not a valid claim either, because you have no proof that that's what they did. What kept the animals higher up on the food chain from instinctually going after their natural prey?

What kept them from eating Noah's family?

The same thing that made them come to the ark on their own. All creatures are subordinate to their creator.

Actually, they are. The definition clearly states that arguments are started for the purpose of persuading:

You’re confounding two different points, the purpose behind presenting arguments is to persuade, but arguments are not deemed sound or unsound based upon whether they persuade or not. Many people are persuaded by logically invalid arguments and many people are not persuaded by logically sound arguments. Given your logic you’d have to argue that Christianity is true because it’s the most persuasive religion in the world. I am saying that does not prove Christianity is true.

The idea of "families" in regards to the biblical "kinds" is an interesting premise. In science, families include both animals and plants. Noah took care of all the kinds/families of animals, but what about the plants that could not survive under water?

Noah was only instructed to bring animals aboard the ark that breathed through nostrils, so no plants or arthropods were taken aboard the ark. Plants that can’t survive under water would have perished, but these plants would have returned after the flood because their seeds would have survived the flood. Interesting question though.

How did the olive tree survive?

It didn’t, the leaf the dove brought back would have been from a new olive tree that had begun to grow after the flood waters had begun to recede. The flood waters began to recede at around 7 months, the dove returned with the leaf at nearly 12 months (11th month, 25th day).

Is there a clear definition given in the bible as to what "kind" is?

Just that all animals reproduce according to their kind, so two animals that cannot reproduce would be different Biblical kinds; which places it near what we would call “Families” today.

What did it look like inside the ark?

500ftx75ftx50ft (1,875,000 cubic feet) in dimensions. Three interior decks (Gen 6:16), stalls for the animals (Gen 6:14).

Maybe there's space for the animals, but what about all the space for the food? Could this food have lasted for a year give or take? If it did, how did they do it?

There would have been more than enough space in a vessel of those dimensions, that’s a huge structure. Most plants, dried meat, and grains can last over a year; I do not see that being an issue.

How did they condition the wood of the ark not to decay?

Scripture says the wood was treated with tar, and a common practice for ships of that time period was to bury the wood for a period of time to strengthen it.

By your calculations, the family had at best 3 hours of sleep per person each day for over a year. Is that correct?

I meant to say 15 animals per hour, good catch. I gave them 8 hours of sleep (which is probably more than is required for adults). 2,000 animals/8 people/16 hours a day = 15 animals per hour, but that’s only if all animals need daily attention, which many do not. It could easily be done with proper organization and planning.

How old was each family member?

We’re not told how old Noah’s daughters in law were but Noah was 600, and his sons were between 50 and 104. This does not mean they looked like one hundred year olds look today, people lived much longer then so their lifespans would have been proportionally similar to ours, Noah would have looked middle aged (he had his first son when he was 500), and his sons much younger.

What was the ratio of men to women?

Noah, Noah’s wife, Noah’s three sons, and Noah’s three daughters in law.

Did the animals breed?

We’re not told either way, obviously they would have had to once getting off of the ark, I would suspect the shorter lived animals such as mice and rats would have also bred while on the ark.

Did any die?

Yes, the female unicorn died. Well some of the clean animals were most likely brought on as food, but none of the paired animals who didn’t breed would have died while on the ark.

That's not what I asked. His actual existence aside, I asked why you can't believe that Hercules accomplished these labours of his? Why is it easier to believe in the Noah's Ark story?

I am not familiar enough with the labors of Hercules to answer that question.

This concept was conceived in the 18th century, and even modern geologists don't hold as strictly to it as they used to.

Yes, because it’s inconsistent, but without adhering to that principle you’d never arrive at an old age for the Earth; so they’ve held onto the conclusions but have tossed out the method that gave them those conclusions.

And that's why geologists dismiss it. They are forced to factor in meteors hitting the earth, global ice ages, etc.

Meteors hitting the earth and having a global ice age are not mutually exclusive with a global flood, creationists believe in an ice age.

Why does this conclude a global flood? There are sediments all over the globe, but there are reasonable explanations how they got there, and it didn't have to be at the same time.

You have two options, either millions of small local floods buried animals so suddenly that we find them even in the process of giving birth and eating other animals (and these animals couldn’t just avoid these local floods), or it was all a single cataclysmic event. The uniform nature of the sedimentary rock all over the Earth seems to indicate a single event at one point in time.

How can you be certain that these sediments settled merely 4000 years ago all at once? How do you know that it was sudden?

We know it was sudden because of the fossils we find in such layers, animals are often buried in the middle of an act, indicating they were buried alive. Bent but unbroken layers of strata also indicate that these layers were all laid down at once, and were morphed while they were still soft. Polystratic structures that span through thousands of layers of strata also indicate the layers were laid down suddenly. The evidence is totally consistent with evidence we find during catastrophic events such as the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption and subsequent flooding.

Assuming that they're right in the first place is fallacious. Why is this mode of thinking looked down upon? Do we not assume innocence until proven guilty?

That’s not what I am saying, I am saying that you are using these assumptions in order to interpret the evidence, and that’s begging the question because if the Bible were true those interpretations would be false; so they cannot be used to argue against the Bible.

No, you're proposing that I chase after a strawman. All I needed to do was describe gravity and its properties, not show you the engine it runs on. Why are you trying to bait me into chasing you down a rabbit hole?

Because I know that in a purely natural and material conceptual scheme you cannot explain such things. You cannot explain what causes anything to happen, and you cannot justify your assumption of future uniformity in Nature. These things make perfect sense if God exists, they make no sense if all that exists is matter.

I'm not at all suggesting that the venture was/is wrong; you did.

17th Century scientific understandings of the Universe were not wrong? I bet you’d have trouble finding a single one that is still accepted today.

By this bit of reasoning that you hold to science, how do you trust in the Bible then? Were the translations of the Bible in the past wrong since new translations are always coming out?

The newer translations are based upon earlier manuscripts, and no there is very little difference between the KJV and the ESV.

Me: You can't justify what you don't know. For all we can tell god created a giant firefly in the sky to light the world for that day.
SW: Sure, but that would still give us days without the Sun, so what’s your point?

Uh oh! I hope you’re not being dishonest here. In Post # 336 you did not bold “You can’t justify what you don’t know.” And it is still that way now, you can see for yourself I took a screen shot…

I'm going to lose my free will and be forced to worship him?

I never said you had free will. You’re not freely choosing not to worship Him now.

My hypothetical is a hypothetical. Hypotheticals create situations that may or may not ever be real. This particular hypothetical was definitely a bit of a no win situation. I really appreciate the fact that you are more moral than your god.

You lost me. More moral than God? That doesn’t make any sense.

Yes.

Why?

You're right. I should watch what I say or She bears might jump out from hiding in the woods and maul me.

Yup.

Can you leave out the special knowledge? I want to know why it's easier to defend monotheism than polytheism. How is it impossible to know anything in a polytheistic world? Why wouldn't the many gods make themselves or their plans known as the one Yahweh supposedly has?

Sure, because in a polytheistic Universe you’ve opened up the possibility of logical contradictions. If logical contradictions can exist we lose our ability to know anything at all. Not only this, but we’d lose the ability to do science because there is no longer a guarantee of future uniformity in scientific laws with multiple gods existing and capable of altering these laws.

Perhaps it's a perversion, but how do you know that? How do you know their claims to being the original Church of Christ are not true? For that matter, how do you know that Islam isn't true?

As I already pointed out, it’s no longer a logically cogent and consistent view of reality.

Speaking of eternal progression, they actually can explain where it came from: their prophet Joseph Smith revealed it to them. Was Joseph Smith a false prophet?

That’s not what I am asking, I am asking where the actual law of eternal progression came from, not who told them about it. You have a system of millions of gods, all of them have their own creation they govern over but why must they follow this one law? Who created that law? Another god? One who is supreme over all other gods? It’s a logically absurd system obviously created by a logically absurd human mind.

[

Being an atheist means that one does not believe in a god, whether it's intentionally or ignorantly. A baby is the latter: they do not have any beliefs in a deity, so they are atheists, or non-theists, if you will.

That’s not the philosophically accepted definition of the term atheism.

“Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief”- Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

You can say babies are non-theistic, but they are also non-atheistic. Given your incorrect definition the dog turd I saw on the sidewalk today would be an atheist. It’s a philosophical position adopted by philosophical minds.

What does atheism being a fringe idea have anything to do with a belief in god being more or less valid?

You tell me, you’re the one who keeps on claiming that ordinary claims require less evidence. I am merely identifying the ordinary claim for you.

For the record, I do not claim "God does not exists". I simply do not believe in claims about deities. No claim, just rejection of claims.

Well you claim to be an atheist, and not merely a non-theist.

Irrelevant.

I thought it was relevant.

You don't make the rules, and neither do I. Wikipedia: Philosophic Burden of Proof

Neither does a user-generated website.

You can disbelieve all you want, but things that demonstrably exist, such as Buddhism, must be recognized as real (no belief or faith necessary). Atheism and agnosticism are real, and since they have no tenets, there is nothing to disbelieve, since they are merely statements of disbelief themselves.

No, atheism is the position affirming that there are no gods, so since I am the one who disbelieves that claim the burden is now on you to prove it. You see what a mess you’ve made?

SW, I've posed a ton of questions to you in this last post. I would greatly appreciate it if you answered them. I do my best to answer your questions, and I'm positive you can do the same for me. I do enjoy this debate; I hope you know that.

I think I answered them. I am sure I will hear about it if I missed something. I enjoy the debate as well my friend, I am glad you were more civil this time around. Kudos.

Affirming the consequent. You seem to be confused about horses and carts...and the order in which they should be described.

Really? I am interested now, what is my consequent? Without a logical syllogism I’d love to know how you claim to know what I am using as my antecedent and what I am using as my consequent.

P1 If secularists assume scripture is wrong in order to argue scripture is wrong, then they are begging the question.
P2 Secularists assume scripture is wrong in order to argue scripture is wrong
C1 Therefore, secularists are begging the question

That’s actually called “affirming the antecedent”, this lesson in logic was free Mr. Sailor.

[Bad Writer]

A person doesn’t get published in the most prestigious scientific journal in the world at the age of 22 by merely being “good at writing articles”. He’s an excellent scientist.

So was Einstein, but he started out sucking pretty bad at math. All I'm saying is that I don't deny the insane smarts that your friend has, but what he says about religion, from what I can tell, is a huge offering of conjectures and what ifs. Those 'what ifs' certainly work as a model for how it could have been (even though I still take issue with it), but because the theory is built that way, it doesn't prove a thing except for the fact that his particular view works.

Take, for example, abiogenesis. We can't prove how exactly it worked on earth (and because of that we don't know for certain that it even happened in our planet's case), but we can still prove that it works. This is a good example of how I approach science. I won't proceed to tell anyone that the inhabitants of this earth came about because of abiogenesis, but I will certainly spread the fact that it's a proven theory.

I wonder...is this how you feel about the story of Noah's Ark?

A man built his house out of straw for stability, but the wind still blew it down. I could have a stable deck of cards, but a breath of air can topple it.

Not sure what your point is, the dimensions for the ark are consistent with an extremely stable vessel. This isn’t like the Gilgamesh story where the boat is a cube.

I'm just saying that saying something is built for stability doesn't make it invulnerable when certain factors are introduced. Say an Eskimo built the strongest Igloo ever. Unfortunately a heat wave hit Alaska all of a sudden. All the stability in the world couldn't save the poor man's Igloo from melting all around him.

Look, perhaps conditions could be met for Noah's giant wooden construct to last all that time. Is it really possible to tell that it happened just from reading lines out of a story book? Later, during the times of Babel, could the people really have built a structure all the way to heaven using the knowledge of architecture of the time? Why also is there no room for doubt?

As is asserting the story isn’t feasible, if you’re allowed to make conjectures about how much poop would have been aboard the ark then I am allowed to make conjectures about how a person could deal with the poop. Fair is fair.

Asserting that the story isn't feasible is all evidence-based. You can think that the evidence is being manipulated to my world view, and I can think the same about you. Just remember that my world view is based on facts and evidence while yours is based on faith. The point I'm trying to make is that in order to even talk about what's possible and not with the story of Noah's Ark is to make conjectures all across the board...I can concede that point.

We can infer from scripture that Noah had between 55 and 75 years to build the Ark depending upon how old his sons were when he began construction.

So during that entire time he was laughed at and ridiculed? No one else was righteous? What about Methuselah, his contemporary, or Enoch, or any of their followers? Did all the righteous up to the point of the first rains of the flood simply vanish, all innocent babies and children included?

And Sarfati has demonstrated the claim is not really that outrageous, the Ark account in Genesis is very feasible thanks to advancements in our understanding of plate tectonics and speciation through Natural Selection. The more we learn the more feasible the story becomes.

I think you need to reconsider what constitutes and outrageous claim and what doesn't? So if you think that the story of Noah's Ark being true isn't outrageous, then perhaps you'll find the stories of Alien Abductions pretty believable too. You'd be surprised at the level of detail that some of the supposed victims weave into their stories. These stories almost become...well...feasible.

What I'm trying to say is that calling a claim feasible isn't reducing the qualifier of outrageous. Saying that we all live in the Matrix has many different feasible models of possibility, but the claim remains outrageous.

What constitutes an outrageous claim for you?

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What I'm saying that he doesn't speculate about are the things that Isaak does believe in. As for wasting everyone's time, it all depends on what you consider a waste. I suppose if he got you to read his arguments, don't you think he probably thinks of that as a win, even if he didn't convince you?

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Why would he present arguments that were already refuted in the very book he is supposed to be countering? That’s just downright sloppy scholarship.

Just because the book gives you something feasible doesn't make the story any less fabricated. The Star Trek franchise presents some pretty convincing scenarios; however, we can't say that we can Time Travel just because the crew of the Enterprise figured out a way to turn the clock any which way by slingshotting around the sun.

The thing that makes science so relevant in today's world is that its theories are peer-reviewed and reproduced, leaving little margin for error based on the known evidence. That doesn't make science wrong, as you assume it does; instead, it gives us a close approximation of a theory. If your friend is, as you say, a scientist, then he should be able to explain this to you. If he instead tells you that science is wrong and can never be trusted, then why is he in the field that he is?

Asserting they went without meat is not a valid claim either, because you have no proof that that's what they did. What kept the animals higher up on the food chain from instinctually going after their natural prey?

What kept them from eating Noah's family?

The same thing that made them come to the ark on their own. All creatures are subordinate to their creator.

I don't believe in a creator. I don't have evidence there is a God. I would need to assume these creatures have a creator before your statement that they are subordinate to it can be rationalized.

You’re confounding two different points, the purpose behind presenting arguments is to persuade, but arguments are not deemed sound or unsound based upon whether they persuade or not. Many people are persuaded by logically invalid arguments and many people are not persuaded by logically sound arguments.

This is as far as you need to go with this. The rest:

Given your logic you’d have to argue that Christianity is true because it’s the most persuasive religion in the world. I am saying that does not prove Christianity is true.

The rest is a red herring. Given by your statement just before this, an argument can be good, persuasive, but also false. It's ability to persuade is still measured though, and therein lies its merits. Arguing someone to the point of changing their mind do not make the points right. I think you know this, and I don't understand why you took it down this path. My only beef is that you seemed to forget that arguments needed to be persuasive to have merits. I believe you've conceded this point, so why can't you just say that? Is it because I'm an Atheist, and, to you, I have to be wrong all the time no matter what?

How did the olive tree survive?

It didn’t, the leaf the dove brought back would have been from a new olive tree that had begun to grow...

How long does it take an olive tree to grow branches big enough for a dove to carry?

Is there a clear definition given in the bible as to what "kind" is?

Just that all animals reproduce according to their kind, so two animals that cannot reproduce would be different Biblical kinds; which places it near what we would call “Families” today.

Animal Classification

"Family
In every order, there are different families of animals which all have very similar features. The Carnivora order breaks into families that include Felidae (Cats), Canidae (Dogs), Ursidae (Bears), and Mustelidae (Weasels)."

So can every Felidae interbreed? Every Carnivora? Can every different type of fly breed with another naturally out in the wild? How exactly are the biblical "Kinds" the same as "Families", when the definition you've provided gives the prerequisite of having to be able to breed with each other?

500ftx75ftx50ft (1,875,000 cubic feet) in dimensions. Three interior decks (Gen 6:16), stalls for the animals (Gen 6:14).

And specialized habitats? Differing climes by region of the boat? Heat lamps for the reptiles? Aquariums for the sea mammals?

Maybe there's space for the animals, but what about all the space for the food? Could this food have lasted for a year give or take? If it did, how did they do it?

There would have been more than enough space in a vessel of those dimensions, that’s a huge structure. Most plants, dried meat, and grains can last over a year; I do not see that being an issue.

You don't see it as an issue because of how you've described the Biblical "Kind", and because of this you've calculated 2000 animals to be on board the boat. So did Noah have a greenhouse to keeps the green foods fresh? Did he have some kind of advanced refrigeration system? Fresh water misters? How did the fresh water remain fresh?

How did they condition the wood of the ark not to decay?

Scripture says the wood was treated with tar, and a common practice for ships of that time period was to bury the wood for a period of time to strengthen it.

So then what's Gopher wood? It it Cypress?

What about ventilation? The Bible offers no explanation, and it only mentions a single door.

I gave them 8 hours of sleep (which is probably more than is required for adults). 2,000 animals/8 people/16 hours a day = 15 animals per hour, but that’s only if all animals need daily attention, which many do not. It could easily be done with proper organization and planning.

You call that easy?

We’re not told how old Noah’s daughters in law were but Noah was 600, and his sons were between 50 and 104. This does not mean they looked like one hundred year olds look today, people lived much longer then so their lifespans would have been proportionally similar to ours, Noah would have looked middle aged (he had his first son when he was 500), and his sons much younger.

Is there any explanation as to why men lived longer back then? Why doesn't anyone live that long today? Why is there no other evidence for this life-span than what is found in the Bible? How do you know how Noah looked?

You have two options, either millions of small local floods buried animals so suddenly that we find them even in the process of giving birth and eating other animals (and these animals couldn’t just avoid these local floods), or it was all a single cataclysmic event.

Right, and so you choose the latter because it lines up with your world view. I'm okay with thinking there might be those two choices, but with what I know of species, the fossil record, plant, animal and sea life, I think the former fits those ideas much better. I'm also willing to say that we could both be wrong, and that there are other, much different but still valid reasons.

That’s not what I am saying, I am saying that you are using these assumptions in order to interpret the evidence, and that’s begging the question because if the Bible were true those interpretations would be false; so they cannot be used to argue against the Bible.

So you don't assume the Bible to be true before looking at the evidence? If you knew nothing about God before searching the universe for answers, would they point to an omnipotent creator, or do you have to know what you're looking for before you find it?

17th Century scientific understandings of the Universe were not wrong? I bet you’d have trouble finding a single one that is still accepted today.

If I lived in the 17th century and was as skeptical as I am now, the evidence would probably turn me to Deism. It doesn't matter if the entire truth is there or not; the problem is assuming one thing to be absolutely true and then turning the evidence over to fit your world view, while discarding all else despite their merits. Is there anything in science besides the age of the earth that you dismiss despite what the scientific community says otherwise?

Me: You can't justify what you don't know. For all we can tell god created a giant firefly in the sky to light the world for that day.
SW: Sure, but that would still give us days without the Sun, so what’s your point?

Uh oh! I hope you’re not being dishonest here. In Post # 336 you did not bold “You can’t justify what you don’t know.” And it is still that way now, you can see for yourself I took a screen shot…

You're looking at the original text, but I bolded my point in my response to emphasize to you what exactly my point was. I never said that the bold was in the original post.

I never said you had free will. You’re not freely choosing not to worship Him now.

So you believe in predestination?

You lost me. More moral than God? That doesn’t make any sense.

You can't fathom being put in a situation, even by the being that gives you commandments from on high, in which you would have to kill another human being. The fact that you are avoiding answering my question is all the answer I need...unless I'm wrong and you would kill if he commanded you to, just like Moses did? Just like Abraham was going to?

To answer why I think God is immoral, I think killing people for not believing, for being homosexual (even though he supposedly made them that way), and for worshiping other gods is downright immoral, for he's getting rid of the competition, he's getting rid of people he doesn't like, and this is very much akin to what Hitler tried to do with the Jews during the Holocaust. Do you believe Adolf Hitler was moral?

...in a polytheistic Universe you’ve opened up the possibility of logical contradictions. If logical contradictions can exist we lose our ability to know anything at all. Not only this, but we’d lose the ability to do science because there is no longer a guarantee of future uniformity in scientific laws with multiple gods existing and capable of altering these laws.

You mean logical contradictions like how Yahweh is both Merciful and Just? Seems like we're still doing science just fine.

Speaking of eternal progression, they actually can explain where it came from: their prophet Joseph Smith revealed it to them. Was Joseph Smith a false prophet?

That’s not what I am asking, I am asking where the actual law of eternal progression came from, not who told them about it. You have a system of millions of gods, all of them have their own creation they govern over but why must they follow this one law? Who created that law? Another god? One who is supreme over all other gods? It’s a logically absurd system obviously created by a logically absurd human mind.

I don't know where the law originated, but they seem to think it didn't originate from anywhere. They believe that eternity is one eternal round, that there is no beginning and no end, that, yes, God had to prove himself to become the one God after walking the earth as a man, and so did his father before him, and his father.

You see...I found out during my time in Mormonism that the regular Joes of the Church don't get to be the kind of God that Yahweh is in Christianity. Elohim, the Mormon Heavenly Father, will always be number one, and that we will sing his praises forever. Later on, Jehovah (Christ) will be a Heavenly Father to his own numberless spirit children, and he will have an only begotten son...and so on.

But why is this idea so crazy? I mean, sure, I think it's all made up hoo ha, but why do you think it's crazy?

Being an atheist means that one does not believe in a god, whether it's intentionally or ignorantly. A baby is the latter: they do not have any beliefs in a deity, so they are atheists, or non-theists, if you will.

That’s not the philosophically accepted definition of the term atheism.

“Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief”- Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Why don't you look a little harder? Atheism is not the same all across the board. There is strong Atheism and weak Atheism. Weak Atheism is the easiest to defend because it doesn't go down the route of Strong Atheism by asserting anything. The definition you provided is for Strong Atheism, and they do have a burden of proof, as it is a positive assertion. Which Atheist position do you think I take?

You don't make the rules, and neither do I. Wikipedia: Philosophic Burden of Proof

Neither does a user-generated website.

Oh, so the external sources that link to the content is wrong too?

I am glad you were more civil this time around. Kudos.

Well, I have to give credit to my wife who told me to keep it civil. She actually did most of the research for the reply last time.

P1 If secularists assume scripture is wrong in order to argue scripture is wrong, then they are begging the question.

They would be kicking their own ass for assuming it's wrong in the first place. Assuming it's right is also stupid.

P2 Secularists assume scripture is wrong in order to argue scripture is wrong

You assume it's right to argue for it. I see no difference.

C1 Therefore, secularists are begging the question

It takes two to tango. There would be no need to argue if you did not first make a claim.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Really? I am interested now, what is my consequent? Without a logical syllogism I’d love to know how you claim to know what I am using as my antecedent and what I am using as my consequent.

Yes, you're right stat. I was using it as a figure of speech. I was pointing out that you tend to think that scripture is self-evident and use it to make arguments for God. Your circular logic begs the question. Your statement was suggestive that if you attempted to make a syllogistic argument, you would not be able to do so without committing a fallacy, and you did not disappoint...

P1 If secularists assume scripture is wrong in order to argue scripture is wrong, then they are begging the question.
P2 Secularists assume scripture is wrong in order to argue scripture is wrong
C1 Therefore, secularists are begging the question
.

Affirming the consequent. You are avoiding alternatives. Such as (The scriptures not being self-evident and lacking sufficient reason themselves) Just to name one.

Cute kid...real cute.

---

p1- If a round object is white, it is a wheel of cheese.
P2-the moon is a round object that is white
p3- The moon is a wheel of cheese

Statler's School of Logic supports this message.

[Statler Waldorf]

So was Einstein, but he started out sucking pretty bad at math. All I'm saying is that I don't deny the insane smarts that your friend has, but what he says about religion, from what I can tell, is a huge offering of conjectures and what ifs. Those 'what ifs' certainly work as a model for how it could have been (even though I still take issue with it), but because the theory is built that way, it doesn't prove a thing except for the fact that his particular view works.

When we’re dealing with the feasibility of a particular story that’s all we need.

Take, for example, abiogenesis. We can't prove how exactly it worked on earth (and because of that we don't know for certain that it even happened in our planet's case), but we can still prove that it works. This is a good example of how I approach science. I won't proceed to tell anyone that the inhabitants of this earth came about because of abiogenesis, but I will certainly spread the fact that it's a proven theory.

Abiogenesis is not a proven theory though, you’re beginning to sound like Texas Sailor, that guy has all sorts of faith in abiogenesis even though it’s never been demonstrated to even be remotely possible.

I'm just saying that saying something is built for stability doesn't make it invulnerable when certain factors are introduced. Say an Eskimo built the strongest Igloo ever. Unfortunately a heat wave hit Alaska all of a sudden. All the stability in the world couldn't save the poor man's Igloo from melting all around him.

Sure, but what factors are you referring to? We know the ark could have survived very tumultuous oceanic conditions because of it’s dimensions, so I am not sure what else it’d have to survive.

Look, perhaps conditions could be met for Noah's giant wooden construct to last all that time. Is it really possible to tell that it happened just from reading lines out of a story book? Later, during the times of Babel, could the people really have built a structure all the way to heaven using the knowledge of architecture of the time? Why also is there no room for doubt?

The Bible is not a mere story book to Christians, so that’s a bit of a misrepresentation. It also never says they built the tower to heaven, it merely says its top was in the “heavens” which means sky in that context. The story of Babel is actually consistent with what we understand about world languages, they seem to originate from about a dozen parent languages, rather than one single language.

Asserting that the story isn't feasible is all evidence-based. You can think that the evidence is being manipulated to my world view, and I can think the same about you. Just remember that my world view is based on facts and evidence while yours is based on faith. The point I'm trying to make is that in order to even talk about what's possible and not with the story of Noah's Ark is to make conjectures all across the board...I can concede that point.

A person does not base their worldview upon facts; they use their worldview in order to interpret the facts and evidence. Worldviews are axiomatic by definition.

So during that entire time he was laughed at and ridiculed? No one else was righteous? What about Methuselah, his contemporary, or Enoch, or any of their followers? Did all the righteous up to the point of the first rains of the flood simply vanish, all innocent babies and children included?

Well Enoch and Methuselah (which apparently means “When he dies, it shall come” interestingly enough) were both gone by that time period. Methuselah died the year of the flood.

I think you need to reconsider what constitutes and outrageous claim and what doesn't? So if you think that the story of Noah's Ark being true isn't outrageous, then perhaps you'll find the stories of Alien Abductions pretty believable too. You'd be surprised at the level of detail that some of the supposed victims weave into their stories. These stories almost become...well...feasible.

A man building a boat, loading it with animals, and surviving a global flood is far more feasible than the physics involved with aliens visiting Earth. Alien abductions are merely a retelling of “old hag” stories (see Old Hag Syndrome) from the time period before Roswell.

What constitutes an outrageous claim for you?

Something with neither Biblical nor scientific support; alien abductions

Just because the book gives you something feasible doesn't make the story any less fabricated. The Star Trek franchise presents some pretty convincing scenarios; however, we can't say that we can Time Travel just because the crew of the Enterprise figured out a way to turn the clock any which way by slingshotting around the sun.

Star Trek is an admitted work of fiction, so it’s not proper to compare it to scripture which claims to be true. You’d actually need some actual evidence suggesting the Noah account is a fabrication, but to the contrary it’s very well supported by cultures around the world.

Another example, let’s compare Genesis 6 with legends held by a people group half way around the World, the American Indian…

“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in[a] man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim[b] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”- Genesis 6:1-8

Mighty giants (the Nephilim, also mentioned in Numbers 13:33 and the extra-Biblical Hebrew sources “the Book of Enoch” and “the Book of Jubilees”) disobey God, God sends a great flood to destroy them.


“One such legend, related by Buffalo Bill in his autobiography, centers on a creation myth. According to Cody, one night a group of Pawnees came into camp bringing with them a number of large bones, one of which a doctor with Cody's expedition identified as a human thighbone. The Pawnees maintained that the bones belonged to an ancient race of men who inhabited the country and were three times the size of human beings of the day. Any one of these giants could run down a buffalo and tear off its leg with one hand and then eat it as he walked. However, these giant men did not believe in the Great Spirit; they were not intimidated by the thunder and lightning and laughed at it. This angered the Great Spirit, and he sent a great rainstorm that drove the giants to the hills. But the water rose and covered the mountaintops as well, and the conceited giants were drowned. Once the floodwaters receded, the Great Spirit considered that he had made men too large and powerful, and he would henceforth re-create them smaller and weaker. The Pawnees maintained that this was Indian history handed down to them from time out of mind. This explains why men are not like the giants of old and have to work harder to hunt and to live. Cody adds an interesting note to this episode. He remarked that since their expedition had no wagons with them and the thighbone was very large, it had to be left behind.” –Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

Mighty giants disobey the Great Spirit, the Great Spirit sends a great flood to destroy them.

The Aztecs held to a corrupted view of the Noah account and Babel account as well…

“When mankind were overwhelmed with the deluge, none were preserved but a man named Coxcox … and a woman called Xochiquetzal, who saved themselves in a little bark, and having afterwards got to land upon a mountain called by them Colhuacan, had there a great many children; these children were all born dumb, until a dove from a lofty tree imparted to them languages, but differing so much that they could not understand one another.” - Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testaments: Studies in Comparative Religion

According to Sanders in the “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, Mesopotamia had a similar legend where all mankind was destroyed in a global flood accept for Utnapishtim who was told by his god to build a giant boat which would house his family and animals. During the flood Utnapishtim released birds (including a dove and raven just like in Genesis) in order to know if land had broken the waters.

According to Morrison in “Ancient Choctaw Legend of the Great Flood”, Choctaw American Indians believed the Great Spirit had destroyed mankind in a great flood accept for one prophet who built a boat of logs and who was spared. All humans descend from this man.

According to “Aboriginal Fables And Legendary Tales” by Reed, Aboriginals believe that evil spirit giants known as Nurrumbunguttia were destroyed in a great flood that covered the mountain tops.

The Aboriginals also tell a story of Gajara, who was spared along with his wife, his sons and their wives when he built a boat to survive a global flood that rose above the mountain tops sent by Ngadja, the Supreme Being. During the voyage, Gajara released several birds to see if the flood waters had receded. After the boat landed, Gajara made a sacrifice to the Supreme Being who put a rainbow in the sky in order to keep the flood waters from flooding the Earth again.

The Teutonic tribes of Scandinavia believe all of mankind except for a select family was destroyed in a global flood; many aspects of this legend speak of water emerging from the Earth akin to the “Fountains of the Great Deep” in Genesis according to The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology.

According to the ancient Chinese “Book of All Knowledge”, mankind’s rebellious deeds were judged by a global flood sent by the gods. The waters were described to come from within the Earth just like in Genesis.

According to “Folklore in the Old Testaments: Studies in Comparative Religion”, a primitive Chinese tribe known as the Bahnars believed that a global flood destroyed everything, except for a man and a woman who took a pair of every animal into a giant chest and were spared to repopulate the Earth.

According to the Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, the Egyptians believed that the god Tem sent a global flood that destroyed all of mankind except for those who were in “Tem’s Boat”.

According to Frazier, the Incas of Peru believed a global flood that rose above the mountain tops killed everything except for a man and a woman who were saved in a box that floated on the waters.

There are over 500 documented versions of these flood legends; all of them describe a single catastrophic flood event. From a Biblical perspective this makes perfect sense, but how do you explain them?

The thing that makes science so relevant in today's world is that its theories are peer-reviewed and reproduced, leaving little margin for error based on the known evidence. That doesn't make science wrong, as you assume it does; instead, it gives us a close approximation of a theory. If your friend is, as you say, a scientist, then he should be able to explain this to you. If he instead tells you that science is wrong and can never be trusted, then why is he in the field that he is?

You’re equivocating a bit with the term “science”. There is nothing wrong with operational and empirical sciences which rely upon direct observation and repeatability. This branch of science is the strongest and coincidentally does not conflict with scripture. In fact, its God’s existence that makes this sort of science even possible. The only science that conflicts with scripture are theories of origins and historical sciences, these are the weakest forms of science and can never disprove anything attested to in scripture because they rely upon anti-Biblical assumptions.

I don't believe in a creator. I don't have evidence there is a God. I would need to assume these creatures have a creator before your statement that they are subordinate to it can be rationalized.

How can something be a creature (that which is created) and not have a creator?

The rest is a red herring. Given by your statement just before this, an argument can be good, persuasive, but also false. It's ability to persuade is still measured though, and therein lies its merits. Arguing someone to the point of changing their mind do not make the points right. I think you know this, and I don't understand why you took it down this path. My only beef is that you seemed to forget that arguments needed to be persuasive to have merits. I believe you've conceded this point, so why can't you just say that? Is it because I'm an Atheist, and, to you, I have to be wrong all the time no matter what?

We’re using the term merits differently, that’s where the confusion lies. When I say, “the merits of an argument” I am referring to its veracity. Apparently when you use that term you’re referring to it’s ability to persuade. Sorry for the confusion (and no, I do not believe you’re wrong all the time).

How long does it take an olive tree to grow branches big enough for a dove to carry?

Everything I can find says that it takes 6-8 weeks for an olive tree to sprout and begin to grow leaves. The dove brought back the olive leaf almost five months after the waters began to recede, so the timeline makes sense.

So can every Felidae interbreed? Every Carnivora? Can every different type of fly breed with another naturally out in the wild? How exactly are the biblical "Kinds" the same as "Families", when the definition you've provided gives the prerequisite of having to be able to breed with each other?

I never said it was synonymous with “family”, I just said in most cases its closer to Family than it is Genus, in some cases not though. Remember, the classification system was developed thousands of years after the Bible, so you’re not going to find a direct lining up. Not only this, but all we have today to examine are the ancestors of the Biblical kinds which have undergone thousands of years of selection and genetic reduction. Creationists are working on gaining a better understanding of which animals would have been in each Biblical kind, by examining present day animals and extinct animals they now believe there were about 1,000 different Biblical kinds of animals.

And specialized habitats? Differing climes by region of the boat? Heat lamps for the reptiles? Aquariums for the sea mammals?

I am not aware of any land dwelling animal that requires a specialized climate controlled habitat. Additionally, I have a pet snake, and she’s lived 3.5 years without a heat lamp. Only land animals were brought upon the ark (Genesis 7:22).

You don't see it as an issue because of how you've described the Biblical "Kind", and because of this you've calculated 2000 animals to be on board the boat. So did Noah have a greenhouse to keeps the green foods fresh? Did he have some kind of advanced refrigeration system? Fresh water misters? How did the fresh water remain fresh?

I didn’t define Biblical “kinds”, the Bible does and there’d be about a thousand of them. Our scientific understanding of speciation made this story possible; 200 years ago it would have seemed impossible. In order to keep plants fresh you really only need a cellar system. You act as if nobody ever embarked upon long sea voyages prior to the invention of the refrigerator.

So then what's Gopher wood? It it Cypress?

We’re not sure what type of wood was called gopher wood.

What about ventilation? The Bible offers no explanation, and it only mentions a single door.

Yup, the description of the ark in scripture is not exhaustive, but we do know that Noah released birds out of something other than the door (since it was shut and ceiled), so we know there were other openings in the ark.

You call that easy?

If that’s all it takes to save humanity and life on Earth, then yes that’s pretty easy. Superman would be jealous

Is there any explanation as to why men lived longer back then? Why doesn't anyone live that long today? Why is there no other evidence for this life-span than what is found in the Bible? How do you know how Noah looked?

Yes, there are several factors contributing to longer lifespans, a Human genome nearly devoid of genetic mutations would be one factor (Noah was only a few generations removed from Adam and Eve), there are also theories about different length telomeres (cancer cells that are not capped by telomeres are essentially immortal if allowed to continue replicating), and pre-flood climates with lower levels of solar entropy that also make a lot of sense. People don’t live that long today because of the genetic drift associated with the bottleneck event at the flood would have affected our genetics, solar entropy is greater today, and our genome contains hundreds of times more copying errors than it would have back then.
The Bible is not the only source mentioning such lifespans, the Hebrew source “The Book of Enoch” also describes such long lifespans. In Chinese culture, Zuo Ci was believed to have lived for over 300 years during the Three Kingdoms Period. During the Yin Dynasty, Peng Zu was believed to have lived for over 800 years. Emperor Jimmu and Emperor Kōan were both believed to have reigned for over a century in Japan. Taejo of Goguryeo reigned in Korea for 93 years. According to Pliny, the Roman census carried out under Vespasian recorded numerous people living in Italy who were close to 150 years old. According to the ancient Greek historian Lucian, Tiresias, the blind seer of Thebes, lived to be over 600 years old, Nestor lived to be over 300 years old, and Epimenides of Crete lived to be almost 300 years. In what is now the Czech Republic, Praotec Čech lived to be 338 years old, and Přemysl, lived for more than 180 years. Saint Servatius, Bishop of Tongeren lived for 375 years. Welsh bard Llywarch Hen lived to be 150 years old. The Maharishi of Kailas was said to be over 300 years old. According to Islamic tradition, Abdul Azziz al-Hafeed al-Habashi lived to be nearly 675 years old. Devraha Baba was rumored to be over 700 or even over 750 years old. In Hinduism, Trailanga Swami lived to be 279 years old, the sadhaka Lokenath Brahmachari lived to be 160 years old. The Buddhist, LP Suwang was believed to have lived for 444 years. Documented in the county census of Yong Tai in Fujian Province, Chen Jun was born during the Tang Dynasty and died during the Yuan Dynasty, making him over 400 years old. Even the United State Social Security death index has records of two women, Anne Feinseth and Elizabeth M. Mahony living over 190 years.

I do not know how Noah looked, but he had children when he was over 500, and built a giant boat, so it makes sense that he’d appear middle aged, because he was aging slower than we do today.

So you don't assume the Bible to be true before looking at the evidence? If you knew nothing about God before searching the universe for answers, would they point to an omnipotent creator, or do you have to know what you're looking for before you find it?

Depends on what we’re looking at, most people arrive at the existence of a single creator by examining the world around them. The finer details require interpretation while looking through the Biblical lenses. There’s nothing wrong with doing that as long as you’re honest about what you’re doing. The world makes far more sense when examined through the Biblical perspective.

If I lived in the 17th century and was as skeptical as I am now, the evidence would probably turn me to Deism. It doesn't matter if the entire truth is there or not; the problem is assuming one thing to be absolutely true and then turning the evidence over to fit your world view, while discarding all else despite their merits. Is there anything in science besides the age of the earth that you dismiss despite what the scientific community says otherwise?

You’re doing the exact same thing though. You interpret the evidence in a manner that is consistent with your materialism, whenever there is evidence that appears to contradict that viewpoint I am sure you write it off or give it a purely natural or material explanation.
Yes, I reject Big Bang cosmology, abiogenesis, and common descent to name a few. Notice, none of those are empirical sciences though.

So you believe in predestination?

I was pre-ordained to.

You can't fathom being put in a situation, even by the being that gives you commandments from on high, in which you would have to kill another human being. The fact that you are avoiding answering my question is all the answer I need...unless I'm wrong and you would kill if he commanded you to, just like Moses did? Just like Abraham was going to?

Who did Moses kill besides the Egyptian guard? To answer your question, it was not morally wrong for the Israelites to wage war and destroy the enemies of God because morality derives from the nature of God.

To answer why I think God is immoral, I think killing people for not believing, for being homosexual (even though he supposedly made them that way), and for worshiping other gods is downright immoral, for he's getting rid of the competition, he's getting rid of people he doesn't like, and this is very much akin to what Hitler tried to do with the Jews during the Holocaust. Do you believe Adolf Hitler was moral?

You think those things are immoral? Why would your opinion of what is immoral apply anymore to God than my opinion of what is immoral? Nobody was killed for being homosexual, they were killed for engaging in sexual relations with other men, so whether you believe people choose to be gay or are born that way is irrelevant because nobody is forcing them to sodomize one another. God has the prerogative to destroy His creation; Hitler does not have the prerogative to destroy God’s creation and will be judged for doing so. As a Christian I take comfort in knowing that Hitler will receive justice for what he did even though he never got it in life, a materialist can find no such comfort.

You mean logical contradictions like how Yahweh is both Merciful and Just? Seems like we're still doing science just fine.

Being merciful and also being just is not a logical contradiction. Yes, we’re doing science because we live in a Universe created by Yahweh.

I don't know where the law originated, but they seem to think it didn't originate from anywhere. They believe that eternity is one eternal round, that there is no beginning and no end, that, yes, God had to prove himself to become the one God after walking the earth as a man, and so did his father before him, and his father.

If it’s an eternal circle, then how can there be a point where one god was not a god but then was a god? That seems to require a linear system, not a circular system. Do you see my point about the law though? Why would gods have to obey a law outside of themselves? Laws seem to require law givers.

You see...I found out during my time in Mormonism that the regular Joes of the Church don't get to be the kind of God that Yahweh is in Christianity. Elohim, the Mormon Heavenly Father, will always be number one, and that we will sing his praises forever. Later on, Jehovah (Christ) will be a Heavenly Father to his own numberless spirit children, and he will have an only begotten son...and so on.

Yup, it’s a bizarre system that seems to change depending upon which Mormon you talk to. Mormons are some of the nicest people around though; I just think they’ve been deceived.

But why is this idea so crazy? I mean, sure, I think it's all made up hoo ha, but why do you think it's crazy?

It’s not a logically cogent view of reality, it seems to allow for inconsistencies and logical absurdities (the Church is infallible but changes what it says is true in order to be more politically correct). Whether you ascribe to its teachings or not, you have to admit that Christianity is the most consistant of the Western religions, Christian Theologians can defend their positions quite well in debates and in the arena of ideas, I do not see that from Mormons.

“Let’s have the intellectual integrity to look at the responses that the Christian Philosophers have made…the point is that Christians have got some grown up answers to these sorts of things. I think Dawkins does a disservice to non-belief by not being prepared to take seriously the types of things believers believe in.” - Dr. Michael Ruse, Philosopher of Science

Why don't you look a little harder? Atheism is not the same all across the board. There is strong Atheism and weak Atheism. Weak Atheism is the easiest to defend because it doesn't go down the route of Strong Atheism by asserting anything. The definition you provided is for Strong Atheism, and they do have a burden of proof, as it is a positive assertion. Which Atheist position do you think I take?

No, the definition I provided was just for atheism, and it’s still the accepted definition today. The position you’re taking is a position first argued by Antony Flew (who ironically later became a theist). He tried to argue that there was a form of atheism that was the default position. However, philosophical references do not accept this definition because it ignores the problem of neutrality, and there is no way of proving what the default position ought to be. If you’re going to claim to be an atheist, you’re going to have to assume the baggage that comes with it. If you want to claim to simply be a non-theist, then you avoid any such baggage.

Oh, so the external sources that link to the content is wrong too?

Yes, that is a simplistic view of the burden of proof that ignores the problem of neutrality and the role of conceptual schemes. Not only this, but it seems to be ignorant of the fact that there’s really no way of proving what is the positive and what is the negative claim in a debate. It also seems to be ignorant of the fact that when dealing with an interrogative such as “does God exist?”, both sides of the aisle shoulder the burden equally. The burden of proof is a very complex concept.

Well, I have to give credit to my wife who told me to keep it civil. She actually did most of the research for the reply last time.

That’s funny; my wife thinks I waste too much time debating such things.

They would be kicking their own ass for assuming it's wrong in the first place. Assuming it's right is also stupid.

Well, you have to do one or the other in order to interpret the evidence.

You assume it's right to argue for it. I see no difference.

Good, I see no difference either, so we can neither establish nor disestablish the veracity of scripture by appealing to scientific evidence, which has been my position all along.

It takes two to tango. There would be no need to argue if you did not first make a claim.

Are you purposefully agreeing with me? Stop it, you’re creeping me out.

Yes, you're right stat.

One second…allow me to savor that for a moment……

I was using it as a figure of speech. I was pointing out that you tend to think that scripture is self-evident and use it to make arguments for God. Your circular logic begs the question. Your statement was suggestive that if you attempted to make a syllogistic argument, you would not be able to do so without committing a fallacy, and you did not disappoint...

You must have missed the point. Both sides must beg the question whenever they appeal to evidentialism. That’s why I do not appeal to scientific evidence in order to prove the Bible is true, and you should not try to point to scientific evidence in order to try and prove it is false. That dog won’t hunt.

Affirming the consequent. You are avoiding alternatives. Such as (The scriptures not being self-evident and lacking sufficient reason themselves) Just to name one.

That is not part of my syllogism; my syllogism was not proving anything in regards to the truth of scripture. My syllogism was valid and sound because it affirmed the antecedent (not the consequent), and if the premises are both true then the conclusion is also true.

p1- If a round object is white, it is a wheel of cheese.
P2-the moon is a round object that is white
p3- The moon is a wheel of cheese

Statler's School of Logic supports this message.

Fallacy of the faulty analogy, yes your syllogism is valid (it’s affirming the antecedent, not affirming the consequent), but it is unsound because premise 1 is false; golf balls are round and white and are not wheels of cheese. My syllogism was sound because both of my premises were true, if you’re assuming something in order to try and prove it is false then you’re begging the question, and secularists assume the global flood never occurred in order to argue that the Bible is false. I grow weary of giving you free logic lessons.

[Bad Writer]

When we’re dealing with the feasibility of a particular story that’s all we need.

It's also all you've got. Feasibility =/= it really happened.

Abiogenesis is not a proven theory though, you’re beginning to sound like Texas Sailor, that guy has all sorts of faith in abiogenesis even though it’s never been demonstrated to even be remotely possible.

When something has been scientifically proven to be possible then there is no reason to have faith in the theory. If he just has faith in the theory, then he needs to read up on it a bit more to solidify his position on it.

Going with the idea that I defend weak Atheism, I will never tell you, for example: "Yes! Life on this planet started because of Abiogenesis!" I can't prove that, and neither can the scientists that proved how Abiogenesis is possible.

Kudos to these guys for playing "god". Here's a list of current Hypotheses someone recently compiled:

Abiogensis List

We don't have a half-billion years to play in a lab, so there is no way to empirically test these ideas. Are these scientists wasting their time trying to figure out which ones work the best?

We know the ark could have survived very tumultuous oceanic conditions because of it’s dimensions, so I am not sure what else it’d have to survive.

We know this? We still don't even know there was an ark!

I think you need to reconsider what constitutes and outrageous claim and what doesn't? So if you think that the story of Noah's Ark being true isn't outrageous, then perhaps you'll find the stories of Alien Abductions pretty believable too. You'd be surprised at the level of detail that some of the supposed victims weave into their stories. These stories almost become...well...feasible.

A man building a boat, loading it with animals, and surviving a global flood is far more feasible than the physics involved with aliens visiting Earth. Alien abductions are merely a retelling of “old hag” stories (see Old Hag Syndrome) from the time period before Roswell.

And you could say the Flood story is the retelling of...well...the story of the Cross-Culture Deluge (thank you for all the different examples). Both are still outrageous, but you can disagree all you want.

What constitutes an outrageous claim for you?

Something with neither Biblical nor scientific support; alien abductions

How do you know those aliens aren't just Angel agents from God? Angels are biblically supported. Would the tales of the abductions cease to be outrageous if this were the case?

Star Trek is an admitted work of fiction, so it’s not proper to compare it to scripture which claims to be true. You’d actually need some actual evidence suggesting the Noah account is a fabrication, but to the contrary it’s very well supported by cultures around the world.

Sorry, bub. This one is yours to prove since it's your claim that the Bible isn't fiction. I see a book, a story, and no proven method of telling whether or not it's true except through study and prayer, apparently. At least Star Trek doesn't lie about its fictional qualities.

“One such legend, related by Buffalo Bill in his autobiography centers on a creation myth."

Oh boy...a legend. How is it that you don't believe in alien abductions? This is all very interesting...it would be even better if that old giant bone were still around to show people. Is it?

"He remarked that since their expedition had no wagons with them and the thighbone was very large, it had to be left behind.” –Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

I guess we'll just have to take it on faith then, just like Joseph Smith's Golden Plates.

There are over 500 documented versions of these flood legends; all of them describe a single catastrophic flood event. From a Biblical perspective this makes perfect sense, but how do you explain them?

Since I'm not trying to prove a Biblical claim, I don't try to explain them. I will say it's all interesting to note, but all you've proven is that there is a flood story that might have a connection between many different lands and cultures. Why would you say the correct version is the one in the Bible as opposed to how it went in the Epic of Gilgamesh? What if every single one of them is a bastardization of an ancient catastrophic event?

There is nothing wrong with operational and empirical sciences which rely upon direct observation and repeatability.

Tracking so far.

This branch of science is the strongest and coincidentally does not conflict with scripture. In fact, its God’s existence that makes this sort of science even possible.

So without God there is no science? Yeah, I'm done talking about this with you. That's like saying without the Flood there are no rainbows. Does not conflict with scripture my ass...many laws of physics would have had to be changed just to accommodate the introduction of light refraction following the Flood if we are to believe that this is the first instance of one. I can't help voluntary ignorance.

How can something be a creature (that which is created) and not have a creator?

Seriously, you're a riot sometimes. If you're serious about this question, then I'll answer it in my follow-up post, but I'm going to take it as a Statler-Waldorf joke for now.

We’re using the term merits differently, that’s where the confusion lies.

We are? Let's see.

When I say, “the merits of an argument” I am referring to its veracity. Apparently when you use that term you’re referring to it’s ability to persuade.

We are talking about different things. The part you're talking about is what you want to be right. I would not be so presumptuous to say that we could know everything for a fact, including whether or not the sources of points in an argument are complete truth or not. In the end, it all comes down to human judgment, right?

---

So can every Felidae interbreed? Every Carnivora? Can every different type of fly breed with another naturally out in the wild? How exactly are the biblical "Kinds" the same as "Families", when the definition you've provided gives the prerequisite of having to be able to breed with each other?

---

I never said it was synonymous with “family”, I just said in most cases its closer to Family than it is Genus, in some cases not though. Remember, the classification system was developed thousands of years after the Bible, so you’re not going to find a direct lining up. Not only this, but all we have today to examine are the ancestors of the Biblical kinds which have undergone thousands of years of selection and genetic reduction. Creationists are working on gaining a better understanding of which animals would have been in each Biblical kind, by examining present day animals and extinct animals they now believe there were about 1,000 different Biblical kinds of animals.

This makes me happy knowing that Creationism is not a science.

I am not aware of any land dwelling animal that requires a specialized climate controlled habitat.

And this has become your issue, not mine, since you've decided to tell us that the Biblical account of the Flood is true. Start making a list and come back when you've figured this one out.

In order to keep plants fresh you really only need a cellar system. You act as if nobody ever embarked upon long sea voyages prior to the invention of the refrigerator.

Did I say something about a refrigerator? Here, I'll do some work for you. Perhaps the rain waters were the source of fresh water?

Still...I don't think green plants would last all year in a cellar system, would they? My refrigerator can barely keep my lettuce fresh for a week. And where is Biblical proof of a cellar system?

We’re not sure what type of wood was called gopher wood.

Extinct after the flood?

---

Yes, there are several factors contributing to longer lifespans, a Human genome nearly devoid of genetic mutations would be one factor (Noah was only a few generations removed from Adam and Eve), there are also theories about different length telomeres (cancer cells that are not capped by telomeres are essentially immortal if allowed to continue replicating), and pre-flood climates with lower levels of solar entropy that also make a lot of sense. People don’t live that long today because of the genetic drift associated with the bottleneck event at the flood would have affected our genetics, solar entropy is greater today, and our genome contains hundreds of times more copying errors than it would have back then.
The Bible is not the only source mentioning such lifespans, the Hebrew source “The Book of Enoch” also describes such long lifespans. In Chinese culture, Zuo Ci was believed to have lived for over 300 years during the Three Kingdoms Period. During the Yin Dynasty, Peng Zu was believed to have lived for over 800 years. Emperor Jimmu and Emperor Kōan were both believed to have reigned for over a century in Japan. Taejo of Goguryeo reigned in Korea for 93 years. According to Pliny, the Roman census carried out under Vespasian recorded numerous people living in Italy who were close to 150 years old. According to the ancient Greek historian Lucian, Tiresias, the blind seer of Thebes, lived to be over 600 years old, Nestor lived to be over 300 years old, and Epimenides of Crete lived to be almost 300 years. In what is now the Czech Republic, Praotec Čech lived to be 338 years old, and Přemysl, lived for more than 180 years. Saint Servatius, Bishop of Tongeren lived for 375 years. Welsh bard Llywarch Hen lived to be 150 years old. The Maharishi of Kailas was said to be over 300 years old. According to Islamic tradition, Abdul Azziz al-Hafeed al-Habashi lived to be nearly 675 years old. Devraha Baba was rumored to be over 700 or even over 750 years old. In Hinduism, Trailanga Swami lived to be 279 years old, the sadhaka Lokenath Brahmachari lived to be 160 years old. The Buddhist, LP Suwang was believed to have lived for 444 years. Documented in the county census of Yong Tai in Fujian Province, Chen Jun was born during the Tang Dynasty and died during the Yuan Dynasty, making him over 400 years old. Even the United State Social Security death index has records of two women, Anne Feinseth and Elizabeth M. Mahony living over 190 years.

---

We must be doing something wrong today if we can barely scrape past 100. McDonald's, anyone?

I do not know how Noah looked, but he had children when he was over 500, and built a giant boat, so it makes sense that he’d appear middle aged, because he was aging slower than we do today.

Psuedo-science sucks. It's okay to say that you simply don't know.

Depends on what we’re looking at, most people arrive at the existence of a single creator by examining the world around them.

Except the ones that don't and instead come up with other ideas...but please continue.

The world makes far more sense when examined through the Biblical perspective.

Or when viewed through the Star Trek perspective. Maybe it makes more sense when viewed through the Harry Potter perspective. No...wait! I got it! The Elder Scrolls perspective has got to be the right one!

You interpret the evidence in a manner that is consistent with your materialism, whenever there is evidence that appears to contradict that viewpoint I am sure you write it off or give it a purely natural or material explanation.

Nope. I say I don't know enough to address that issue. Am I wrong to do that?

Yes, I reject Big Bang cosmology, abiogenesis, and common descent to name a few. Notice, none of those are empirical sciences though.

So you probably think Lawrence Krauss is a whack-a-do.

Who did Moses kill besides the Egyptian guard? To answer your question, it was not morally wrong for the Israelites to wage war and destroy the enemies of God because morality derives from the nature of God.

Justify it all you want. You only think morality is derived from the nature of god, but you can't prove it. So why was it moral for Abraham to obey god's command to slay Isaac?

To answer why I think God is immoral, I think killing people for not believing, for being homosexual (even though he supposedly made them that way), and for worshiping other gods is downright immoral, for he's getting rid of the competition, he's getting rid of people he doesn't like, and this is very much akin to what Hitler tried to do with the Jews during the Holocaust. Do you believe Adolf Hitler was moral?

You think those things are immoral? Why would your opinion of what is immoral apply anymore to God than my opinion of what is immoral?

It's important because we as humans have a natural tendency to share ideas, and many things we hold to be moral are considered thus in many areas of this world. I care what you think not only because it interests me, but because I need to know if there's some nugget of information that is either useful or detrimental, especially since we live in and share the same world.

Nobody was killed for being homosexual, they were killed for engaging in sexual relations with other men, so whether you believe people choose to be gay or are born that way is irrelevant because nobody is forcing them to sodomize one another.

You mean God didn't foreordain them to Sodomize each other?

...

That was a joke, sorry. I actually have a clear understanding of foreordination and free will in that both can be independent of each other but work at the same time...as long as there's a extra-temporal being hanging around making the rules, that is.

So then why doesn't God punish animals who sodomize each other?

God has the prerogative to destroy His creation;

So do you think we have the prerogative to kill the children we create? Do you think that we should let the Muslim fathers and brothers continue killing their daughters because they were raped?

Hitler does not have the prerogative to destroy God’s creation and will be judged for doing so. As a Christian I take comfort in knowing that Hitler will receive justice for what he did even though he never got it in life, a materialist can find no such comfort.

You mean I can't understand that shit happens? That some people are bad? How do you know I'm a materialist (you keep calling me this, so something I said must have triggered this assumption).

You mean logical contradictions like how Yahweh is both Merciful and Just? Seems like we're still doing science just fine.

Being merciful and also being just is not a logical contradiction.

Oh, so he has a time-share personality.

Yes, we’re doing science because we live in a Universe created by Yahweh.

Or we're doing science, and this phenomenon has nothing to do with a creator god.

Do you see my point about the law though? Why would gods have to obey a law outside of themselves? Laws seem to require law givers.

Why would you have to obey the laws of gods? Why not make your own? If there was a polytheistic system, you are so used to the one-god system that you assume there must be a higher law that everyone is bound to. You have the presupposition that such things are black and white...what if there were many gods (that were real) and each one had his/her own system? What then?

Mormons are some of the nicest people around though; I just think they’ve been deceived.

How do you keep from being deceived then?

Whether you ascribe to its teachings or not, you have to admit that Christianity is the most consistant of the Western religions...

Granted, Mormonism falls apart really easily, and all they have to fall back on is "Well, just read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, and the Holy Ghost will reveal the truth of these things to you." But...



Scientology isn't consistent? Jehovah's Witnesses aren't consistent?
Seventh-Day Adventists aren't consistent? (Yeah, the last two are forms of Christianity, but I'd say they're far enough off the track to be taken for something different.)

“Let’s have the intellectual integrity to look at the responses that the Christian Philosophers have made…the point is that Christians have got some grown up answers to these sorts of things. I think Dawkins does a disservice to non-belief by not being prepared to take seriously the types of things believers believe in.” - Dr. Michael Ruse, Philosopher of Science

I don't speak for Dawkins, but I'm never surprised when he scoffs at claims of a deity. To take these claims seriously is to then give merit to other outrageous claims such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and Alien Abductions, mainstream though you claim Christianity to be. Do you not consider Islam's claims to be outrageous? You certainly feel this way about Mormonism, don't you?

---

Why don't you look a little harder? Atheism is not the same all across the board. There is strong Atheism and weak Atheism. Weak Atheism is the easiest to defend because it doesn't go down the route of Strong Atheism by asserting anything. The definition you provided is for Strong Atheism, and they do have a burden of proof, as it is a positive assertion. Which Atheist position do you think I take?

---

No, the definition I provided was just for atheism, and it’s still the accepted definition today.

By people trying to label atheists. I'm done with this one. You want me to take your claims seriously, but you can't take my position in the same attitude? I'm afraid this is turning out to be a wasted debate.

Oh, so the external sources that link to the content is wrong too?

Yes...

I'm afraid any debate with you is pointless if you take this kind of attitude with valid sources.

[The Reality Salesman01]

You must have missed the point. Both sides must beg the question whenever they appeal to evidentialism. That’s why I do not appeal to scientific evidence in order to prove the Bible is true, and you should not try to point to scientific evidence in order to try and prove it is false. That dog won’t hunt.

Again...Horses and carts my dear sir. You seem to think that both sides stand on level footing. Because your bible has not been proven as a true source of information, it is perfectly acceptable to assume that it is not until proven otherwise. This seems to be a common mistake.

That is not part of my syllogism; my syllogism was not proving anything in regards to the truth of scripture. My syllogism was valid and sound because it affirmed the antecedent (not the consequent), and if the premises are both true then the conclusion is also true.

You pointed out that my syllogism was valid. You showed that it wasn't true. I can re-word it for you if you insist, but now your just stalling. Your flawed logic will still support its conclusion Stat...


p1- [edit]A wheel of cheese can be recognized as being a round white object.
P2-the moon is a round object that is white
p3- The moon is a wheel of cheese

-Statler's School of Logic supports this message.


Yours wasn't true either because your conclusion is not supported by the premises. Valid, yes. True? No. Your conclusion can be dismissed on account of your premises overlooking alternatives that could render your conclusion false. Your first premise is false! That's why I used it as an example! Secularists are not begging the question if the thing they are assuming is false has not been proven true by the individual bearing the burden of proof (YOU). I'm sorry dude, but no matter how you slice it, you can't use god to prove god, or the bible to prove the bible. That dog won't hunt. In fact, that dog seems to be dizzy from all the circles your logic sends it through.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Just answer this question, in one sentence or less Stat:

How is assuming that the bible isn't true, begging the question?

Please don't tell me: "Because God says it is!"

[Statler Waldorf]

It's also all you've got. Feasibility =/= it really happened.

Never said it did, but it gives me no basis to doubt that it did in fact happen.

When something has been scientifically proven to be possible then there is no reason to have faith in the theory. If he just has faith in the theory, then he needs to read up on it a bit more to solidify his position on it.

How has abiogenesis been scientifically proven to be possible?

Going with the idea that I defend weak Atheism, I will never tell you, for example: "Yes! Life on this planet started because of Abiogenesis!" I can't prove that, and neither can the scientists that proved how Abiogenesis is possible.

You mean non-theism? I am not aware of any experiment that proves abiogenesis is possible, they all sneak intelligence in through the backdoor and also produce the wrong building blocks.

Abiogensis List

And to think you objected to me conjecturing about the ark account but then allow this sort of Ad hoc hypothesizing. All you have demonstrated is that scientists have no clue how life could arise from non-life, each one of these theories tries to reconcile the problems associated with other theories but introduces new problems of their own. It’s a complete mess.

We don't have a half-billion years to play in a lab, so there is no way to empirically test these ideas. Are these scientists wasting their time trying to figure out which ones work the best?

Yes, they are wasting their time. We know life cannot naturally arise from non-life, law of biogenesis.

We know this? We still don't even know there was an ark!

More special pleading, you do not know there ever was a primordial soup either but you seem to be fine with hypothesizing about how such an environment could give rise to life. I know there was an ark.

And you could say the Flood story is the retelling of...well...the story of the Cross-Culture Deluge (thank you for all the different examples). Both are still outrageous, but you can disagree all you want.

No, it’s more likely the cross-cultural deluge stories are a result of all cultures descending from Noah. You’d have to believe all of those cultures just happened to adopt the same story.

How do you know those aliens aren't just Angel agents from God? Angels are biblically supported. Would the tales of the abductions cease to be outrageous if this were the case?

Perhaps fallen angels, I do not see something like that being a result of angels. I’ve already said that I’d consider a supernatural theory about alien abductions; that is far more plausible than material beings traveling to Earth simply to probe us and make circles in our corn fields.

Sorry, bub. This one is yours to prove since it's your claim that the Bible isn't fiction. I see a book, a story, and no proven method of telling whether or not it's true except through study and prayer, apparently. At least Star Trek doesn't lie about its fictional qualities.

That’s why it was a fallacious analogy, you were comparing an admitted piece of fiction to a piece claiming to be true; so the analogy proves nothing. You still seem to have this backwards, you reason from the truth of scripture, not to the truth of scripture.

Oh boy...a legend. How is it that you don't believe in alien abductions? This is all very interesting...it would be even better if that old giant bone were still around to show people. Is it?

Legends are no more likely to be false than they are to be true. Are you saying that Cody made the entire story up because he knew that in the future people would begin questioning the flood accounts in Genesis? Really?

I guess we'll just have to take it on faith then, just like Joseph Smith's Golden Plates.

Cody is an accepted historical reference, Smith is not. It’s funny how you keep pretending like you do not accept anything upon faith, when the majority of what you believe is based solely upon faith.

Since I'm not trying to prove a Biblical claim, I don't try to explain them. I will say it's all interesting to note, but all you've proven is that there is a flood story that might have a connection between many different lands and cultures. Why would you say the correct version is the one in the Bible as opposed to how it went in the Epic of Gilgamesh? What if every single one of them is a bastardization of an ancient catastrophic event?

The Biblical account is the only one that is feasible. The other accounts are obviously corrupted versions, which would be expected. If you’re going to reject the Noah account then you’re going to have to explain away evidence that supports it, so you do in fact have to explain why so many cultures have the same story.

So without God there is no science? Yeah, I'm done talking about this with you. That's like saying without the Flood there are no rainbows. Does not conflict with scripture my ass...many laws of physics would have had to be changed just to accommodate the introduction of light refraction following the Flood if we are to believe that this is the first instance of one. I can't help voluntary ignorance.

That’s correct, without God promising future uniformity in natural law there is no way to justify the assumptions science operates upon. Secondly, God doesn’t have to change the laws of physics to introduce a rainbow, here merely has to change the weather. Rainbows requires specific conditions, if those conditions were only first present after the flood…voila…the first rainbow. Essentially you’re arguing that the laws of physics would have to change in order for people to observe their first solar eclipse; not at all. Although this all is a bit of a moot discussion because Genesis never says the rainbow first appeared after the flood, it merely was made a sign of the covenant after the flood, much like the fact that the first bread and wine wasn’t produced in the upper room when Jesus made it a sign of the new covenant.

Seriously, you're a riot sometimes. If you're serious about this question, then I'll answer it in my follow-up post, but I'm going to take it as a Statler-Waldorf joke for now.

Just razzing you for calling something a creature but then asking how we know it has a creator, well you tell me since you used the term creature. Would be like asking how we know an offspring has a parent.

We are talking about different things. The part you're talking about is what you want to be right. I would not be so presumptuous to say that we could know everything for a fact, including whether or not the sources of points in an argument are complete truth or not. In the end, it all comes down to human judgment, right?

No, it all doesn’t reduce to skepticism, trying to argue that we cannot know anything for certain reduces to a self-refuting argument; so we can know some things for certain. I would agree though, if we lived in a purely natural and material Universe, then knowledge itself would be impossible.

This makes me happy knowing that Creationism is not a science.

It’s as much of a science as Darwinism, so toss them both out if you’re going to be that picky.

And this has become your issue, not mine, since you've decided to tell us that the Biblical account of the Flood is true. Start making a list and come back when you've figured this one out.

A list of what?

Did I say something about a refrigerator? Here, I'll do some work for you. Perhaps the rain waters were the source of fresh water?

There’s reason to believe that most of the salinity we find in sea water (which is increasing due to run-off) is a direct result of the flood, so the ocean itself would not have been dangerous to drink prior to the waters receding and pulling the sodium with them during continental run-off.

Still...I don't think green plants would last all year in a cellar system, would they? My refrigerator can barely keep my lettuce fresh for a week. And where is Biblical proof of a cellar system?

Most root cellars can keep food fresh for years, even in hot desert climates. The ark would have only need a cool and dark area to keep the food. I do not know how they did it, but it’s certainly feasible that they did.

Extinct after the flood?

Yes, Noah cut it all down. No, it’s probably just something we call by a different name today.

We must be doing something wrong today if we can barely scrape past 100. McDonald's, anyone?

It’s called genetic entropy. It is evidence that completely contradicts the Darwinian Paradigm, people should be living longer today than they did in the past, but they’re not.

Psuedo-science sucks. It's okay to say that you simply don't know.

What I said wasn’t un-scientific; he obviously was aging slower because he lived so much longer. If you’re allowed to tell stories about how amino acids “piggy backed” on the backs of crystals on some fictional beach in an environment we know nothing about 4.5 billion years ago, then I am allowed to hypothesize about how Noah may have looked.

Except the ones that don't and instead come up with other ideas...but please continue.

That’s why I said most people. Seven billion people live on Earth, over four billion of them are monotheists who believe in creation ex nihilo.

Or when viewed through the Star Trek perspective. Maybe it makes more sense when viewed through the Harry Potter perspective. No...wait! I got it! The Elder Scrolls perspective has got to be the right one!

Continue to draw fallacious analogies all you want, it does nothing to support your position.

Nope. I say I don't know enough to address that issue. Am I wrong to do that?

Depends on your level of ignorance I guess.

So you probably think Lawrence Krauss is a whack-a-do.

The author of “The Physics of Star Trek”?

Justify it all you want. You only think morality is derived from the nature of god, but you can't prove it. So why was it moral for Abraham to obey god's command to slay Isaac?

Of course I can prove it; all other proposed definitions of morality reduce to absurdity. Abraham didn’t slay Isaac.

It's important because we as humans have a natural tendency to share ideas, and many things we hold to be moral are considered thus in many areas of this world. I care what you think not only because it interests me, but because I need to know if there's some nugget of information that is either useful or detrimental, especially since we live in and share the same world.

Ok, but that doesn’t prove that God did anything immoral does it?

You mean God didn't foreordain them to Sodomize each other?

God did not compel them against their will to sodomize one another. They chose to in accordance to their sinful nature.

That was a joke, sorry. I actually have a clear understanding of foreordination and free will in that both can be independent of each other but work at the same time...as long as there's a extra-temporal being hanging around making the rules, that is.

We probably differ a bit on that subject.

So then why doesn't God punish animals who sodomize each other?

Animals are corrupted creatures as well, that’s why they kill, rape, and do such vile things to one another. As for punishment, they are not created in the image of God so they do not have an immaterial aspect to their being, so no eternal judgment (Isaiah 31).

So do you think we have the prerogative to kill the children we create? Do you think that we should let the Muslim fathers and brothers continue killing their daughters because they were raped?

No, God owns all of creation, and our children bear the image of God as well, that is not something we endowed upon them, but God did; so we do not have the prerogative to destroy them because He who owns us forbids it.

You mean I can't understand that shit happens? That some people are bad? How do you know I'm a materialist (you keep calling me this, so something I said must have triggered this assumption).

You claim to be a weak atheist, I am not aware of any atheists who believe in the existence of the immaterial, just like you can assume I am not a materialist because I am a Christian.

Oh, so he has a time-share personality.

No, Christ became the object of God’s wrath so that we may have mercy.

Or we're doing science, and this phenomenon has nothing to do with a creator god.

You’d have to justify the assumptions science operates upon without appealing to a creator in order to support this belief. I already tried forcing you to do this, you seemed unwilling to do so.

Why would you have to obey the laws of gods? Why not make your own? If there was a polytheistic system, you are so used to the one-god system that you assume there must be a higher law that everyone is bound to. You have the presupposition that such things are black and white...what if there were many gods (that were real) and each one had his/her own system? What then?

But according to Mormonism they apparently do not have their own system because their systems must follow a set of rules that apparently transcend all gods. Who made those rules? Who gives the man his powers in order that he may become a god? I thought that Mormons believed that only matter and intelligences were eternal? Apparently, so is the law of eternal progression, and yet it’s neither matter nor an intelligence. The whole theological system is just a huge mess.

How do you keep from being deceived then?

By loving truth. Logic derives directly from God’s character, so if something is logically contradictory or logically absurd it cannot be the word of God.

Granted, Mormonism falls apart really easily, and all they have to fall back on is "Well, just read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, and the Holy Ghost will reveal the truth of these things to you." But...

Yes, an appeal to emotion and intuition; the “burning in the bosom.” Unfortunately, charismatic Christians often use the same approach.

Scientology isn't consistent? Jehovah's Witnesses aren't consistent?
Seventh-Day Adventists aren't consistent? (Yeah, the last two are forms of Christianity, but I'd say they're far enough off the track to be taken for something different.)

I do not know enough about scientology (apart from South Park) to really address that. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not consistent with scripture; even though they claim scripture is the word of God, so that’s a contradiction. Seventh Day Adventists have actually drifted back a lot closer to orthodox Christianity in the past 30 years, there are Christians who go to that church, they have just screwed up some of their doctrines.

I don't speak for Dawkins, but I'm never surprised when he scoffs at claims of a deity. To take these claims seriously is to then give merit to other outrageous claims such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and Alien Abductions, mainstream though you claim Christianity to be. Do you not consider Islam's claims to be outrageous? You certainly feel this way about Mormonism, don't you?

That seems to be a bit of a logical non-sequitur, not unlike, “Well if I believe in evolution it opens the door to other outrageous claims such as eugenics, Lamarckism, aliens, and spontaneous generation (sorry, I had to throw that one in there ).” I wouldn’t say I reject Islam and Mormonism because they are outrageous; I reject them because they are logically inconsistent and incoherent.

By people trying to label atheists. I'm done with this one. You want me to take your claims seriously, but you can't take my position in the same attitude? I'm afraid this is turning out to be a wasted debate.

Of course people are trying to label atheists (interestingly enough the article I quoted was written by an atheist), that’s because atheism is a philosophical position that has a particular meaning. All I am saying is that that position has a different meaning than what you are claiming it has. If someone came up to you and claimed, “I am a Christian since I believe that Muhammad was a prophet and that the Quran is the revealed word of Allah.” Would you try to correct them or would you simply agree that they are a Christian? I am not being disrespectful, I just think you’d qualify as more of a non-theist than an actual atheist.

I'm afraid any debate with you is pointless if you take this kind of attitude with valid sources.

Wikipedia is not a scholarly source and I explained to you why the view you hold concerning the burden of proof doesn’t work. Are you going to address my points?

Again...Horses and carts my dear sir. You seem to think that both sides stand on level footing. Because your bible has not been proven as a true source of information, it is perfectly acceptable to assume that it is not until proven otherwise. This seems to be a common mistake.

No, it’s not acceptable to assume that at all because that falsely assumes there is neutral ground to reason from. There’s not. You’re just as guilty of begging the question as the Christian who assumes the Bible is the word of God because it says it is.

You pointed out that my syllogism was valid. You showed that it wasn't true. I can re-word it for you if you insist, but now your just stalling. Your flawed logic will still support its conclusion Stat...

Yes, your syllogism was unsound, mine was sound. I am not sure what your point is.

p1- [edit]A wheel of cheese can be recognized as being a round white object.
P2-the moon is a round object that is white
p3- The moon is a wheel of cheese

Here we go again, this syllogism (even though it’s technically not even a syllogism) is not even valid (so it therefore cannot be sound either) because it’s affirming the consequent (round white object) rather than affirming the antecedent (wheel of cheese).

Yours wasn't true either because your conclusion is not supported by the premises. Valid, yes.

*Sigh*, a valid argument Is one where if the premises are both true then the conclusion must also be true, so what you’re asserting above does not make any sense.

True? No. Your conclusion can be dismissed on account of your premises overlooking alternatives that could render your conclusion false. Your first premise is false! That's why I used it as an example! Secularists are not begging the question if the thing they are assuming is false has not been proven true by the individual bearing the burden of proof (YOU). I'm sorry dude, but no matter how you slice it, you can't use god to prove god, or the bible to prove the bible. That dog won't hunt. In fact, that dog seems to be dizzy from all the circles your logic sends it through.

Assuming something is false in order to argue that it is false is not begging the question (my frist premise)? Then what is begging the question?

How do you know that I bear the burden of proof?

Just answer this question, in one sentence or less Stat:

How is assuming that the bible isn't true, begging the question?

Please don't tell me: "Because God says it is!"

It’s not, but we’re not talking about merely assuming the Bible is false; we’re talking about using arguments that rely upon the assumption that the Bible is false in order to argue that the Bible is false, which IS begging the question.

There, one sentence.

[Bad Writer]

It's also all you've got. Feasibility =/= it really happened.

Never said it did, but it gives me no basis to doubt that it did in fact happen.

It doesn't? "Sir, we have no reason to believe he murdered the subject, but we have no reason to doubt that he didn't either! Let's go with the latter, because I say so! All in favor say 'Yea'!" This is you, SW.

And hypothesizing how abiogensis naturally occurred is much more thought-provoking than saying "Goddidit", every time, hands down. If you think they're wasting their time on these theories, then you need to give them a better one. But wait...you just say "Goddidit", and that's an argument from ignorance. Well excuse these scientists for trying their best not to be ignorant like the fools who spend 15 seconds to hypothesize a God instead. If you have proof that God exists, then perhaps you might have something worth bringing to the table, otherwise, you are wasting your breath on these men.

More special pleading, you do not know there ever was a primordial soup either but you seem to be fine with hypothesizing about how such an environment could give rise to life. I know there was an ark.

How do you know there was an ark? You don't know that any more than I know there was a primordial soup, and but I don't need to hypothesize a God in order to come up with conditions for the soup. This god is carrying more baggage than the original spark of life! If you want to pin me with special pleading, you should stop doing it yourself, unless you're just fine proceeding in this manner. And if that's the case, then blaming me for something you yourself do is being hypocritical. Are you okay with being a hypocrite?

As for the flood originating with Noah, you have no proof. Stop it.

You still seem to have this backwards, you reason from the truth of scripture, not to the truth of scripture.

No one should ever reason from a story book, even if it claims to be real. Does that clarify my position any?

Legends are no more likely to be false than they are to be true. Are you saying that Cody made the entire story up because he knew that in the future people would begin questioning the flood accounts in Genesis? Really?

Hey, you said it, not me. That jump in logic was all you.

Cody is an accepted historical reference, Smith is not. It’s funny how you keep pretending like you do not accept anything upon faith, when the majority of what you believe is based solely upon faith.

What, Smith wasn't a real person that made up fantastic stories? What the fuck am I taking on faith, exactly? If you try to pin that rot on me, then you'd better think about it real hard before you do.

The Biblical account is the only one that is feasible. The other accounts are obviously corrupted versions, which would be expected. If you’re going to reject the Noah account then you’re going to have to explain away evidence that supports it, so you do in fact have to explain why so many cultures have the same story.

I'm not going to explain away any of that. It's your claim, so it's your belief. I haven't accepted it as a belief, so the burden of proof is all on you to change my mind. You sure do try hard to shirk your responsibilities to your outrageous claims.

That’s correct, without God promising future uniformity in natural law there is no way to justify the assumptions science operates upon. Secondly, God doesn’t have to change the laws of physics to introduce a rainbow, here merely has to change the weather. Rainbows requires specific conditions, if those conditions were only first present after the flood…voila…the first rainbow. Essentially you’re arguing that the laws of physics would have to change in order for people to observe their first solar eclipse; not at all. Although this all is a bit of a moot discussion because Genesis never says the rainbow first appeared after the flood, it merely was made a sign of the covenant after the flood, much like the fact that the first bread and wine wasn’t produced in the upper room when Jesus made it a sign of the new covenant.

Once again, I can't help voluntary ignorance. I'm not discussing these things with you.

Just razzing you for calling something a creature but then asking how we know it has a creator, well you tell me since you used the term creature. Would be like asking how we know an offspring has a parent.

Oh, so attaching the word "creature" to someone is empirical evidence that such a thing has a creator, much like offspring has parents? You need help with differentiating your colloquialisms and inherited words from those whose meanings are always self-evident.

And this has become your issue, not mine, since you've decided to tell us that the Biblical account of the Flood is true. Start making a list and come back when you've figured this one out.

A list of what?

It appears...I lost a word or two there. Well, your guess is a good as mine at this point.

Did I say something about a refrigerator? Here, I'll do some work for you. Perhaps the rain waters were the source of fresh water?

There’s reason to believe that most of the salinity we find in sea water (which is increasing due to run-off) is a direct result of the flood, so the ocean itself would not have been dangerous to drink prior to the waters receding and pulling the sodium with them during continental run-off.

Right, let's just make up insane theories about global floods and forget how that all affects the ecosystem. I'm no Marine Biologist, but it doesn't exactly take one to postulate that most everything, if not all things, would be dead in the water after such a catastrophe. So I assume you must think they had help from God to survive such an event, or their habitat needs were altered for this one time. Look, I understand that you think your God can do all things, but for those of us who don't believe in your god, we're going to keep to what seems more plausible.

Still...I don't think green plants would last all year in a cellar system, would they? My refrigerator can barely keep my lettuce fresh for a week. And where is Biblical proof of a cellar system?

Most root cellars can keep food fresh for years, even in hot desert climates. The ark would have only need a cool and dark area to keep the food. I do not know how they did it, but it’s certainly feasible that they did.

Special pleading then. Great. "I don't know how they did it, but it must have happened!" Sorry...no, that's an argument from ignorance. Or was it both?

We must be doing something wrong today if we can barely scrape past 100. McDonald's, anyone?

It’s called genetic entropy. It is evidence that completely contradicts the Darwinian Paradigm, people should be living longer today than they did in the past, but they’re not.

Right, right. For all the trillions of people that have walked the earth, only the couple dozen or so that you listed, not including those referenced in the Holy Babble, were documented as living beyond 200 and 300 years of age. How is that evidence that ALL of us should be living longer like them?

What I said wasn’t un-scientific; he obviously was aging slower because he lived so much longer.

No...that's not scientific. It's an idea based on how you think the aging process works.

If you’re allowed to tell stories about how amino acids “piggy backed” on the backs of crystals on some fictional beach in an environment we know nothing about 4.5 billion years ago, then I am allowed to hypothesize about how Noah may have looked.

Assuming Noah was real, of course. However, I don't tell stories. Scientists can prove that Amino acids are real and that they can naturally form when under certain conditions. But, please, tell me more of these Fairy Tales that you are so taken with.

Continue to draw fallacious analogies all you want, it does nothing to support your position.

No, no, fairy tale analogies fit in very well with the world view you hold to. I'm quite content doing this.

So you probably think Lawrence Krauss is a whack-a-do.

The author of “The Physics of Star Trek”?

I own that book, FYI. So you compare something he wrote as a side-hobby to being of equal importance to his actual work? Who's making fallacious analogies now?

Abraham didn’t slay Isaac.

Oh, forgive me for my ignorance, I suppose I forgot that part. So then what would have happened if the Angel hadn't stopped him? You know as well as I do that Isaac would have been dead, dead, dead in this story...unless, of course, Abraham read the script beforehand. I can see it now, "Okay, God. This is the part where you send your angel, right? Your angel will stop me from killing my son...right? God? Anytime now!" This story, right here, is proof enough to show that your God's morals are fucked up. If this is how he tests the faith of his children, then I want no part in it. That branch you think we're sitting on is as fictional as the words in that ancient text of yours.

They chose to in accordance to their sinful nature.

The sinful nature God gave them. I can do this all day.

We probably differ a bit on that subject.

We do! You believe in fore-ordination, and I sure as fuck don't.

Animals are corrupted creatures as well, that’s why they kill, rape, and do such vile things to one another. As for punishment, they are not created in the image of God so they do not have an immaterial aspect to their being, so no eternal judgment (Isaiah 31).

Oh, I see what you did there. You equated "vile things" to natural tendencies. Stop it.

So do you think we have the prerogative to kill the children we create? Do you think that we should let the Muslim fathers and brothers continue killing their daughters because they were raped?

No, God owns all of creation, and our children bear the image of God as well, that is not something we endowed upon them, but God did; so we do not have the prerogative to destroy them because He who owns us forbids it.

:yawn: Special logic is a bitch.

You claim to be a weak atheist, I am not aware of any atheists who believe in the existence of the immaterial, just like you can assume I am not a materialist because I am a Christian.

I can fathom nothing. That immaterial enough for you? Why is everything so black and white with you?

You’d have to justify the assumptions science operates upon without appealing to a creator in order to support this belief. I already tried forcing you to do this, you seemed unwilling to do so.

It's not going to appeal to supernatural claims, meaning, it will never fill in the gaps with "Goddidit". You can do that all you want, but it will only stunt your intellectual growth.

But according to Mormonism they apparently do not have their own system because their systems must follow a set of rules that apparently transcend all gods. Who made those rules? Who gives the man his powers in order that he may become a god? I thought that Mormons believed that only matter and intelligences were eternal? Apparently, so is the law of eternal progression, and yet it’s neither matter nor an intelligence. The whole theological system is just a huge mess.

How is the idea of one eternal god not also begging the question? Mormonism is wrong not because of its doctrines, but because it's made up!

I wouldn’t say I reject Islam and Mormonism because they are outrageous; I reject them because they are logically inconsistent and incoherent.

They use special pleading the same way you do to make their religions seem logically consistent and coherent. You don't see it because you're too far in. I can talk all I want, but the only one in a position to help you right now with your delusions is yourself.

All I am saying is that that position has a different meaning than what you are claiming it has. If someone came up to you and claimed, “I am a Christian since I believe that Muhammad was a prophet and that the Quran is the revealed word of Allah.” Would you try to correct them or would you simply agree that they are a Christian? I am not being disrespectful, I just think you’d qualify as more of a non-theist than an actual atheist.

You keep spreading this shit all you want, but every atheist here, and even those not here, will tell you the same thing that I am. Are all of us wrong about our position? Do you get to decide what we are, or do we? I mean...I don't exactly call you a Taoist, do I? That would be silly of me.

I'm afraid any debate with you is pointless if you take this kind of attitude with valid sources.

Wikipedia is not a scholarly source and I explained to you why the view you hold concerning the burden of proof doesn’t work. Are you going to address my points?

I did, but you ignored the fact that I pointed out that those articles are a combination of outside, legitimate sources. Are you going to keep bugging me about this, or are you going to let it go? I don't agree with your ideas about Burden of Proof, and I never will. There, is that better? Now, if you ask me to prove your claims wrong or right anymore, I'm going to need to end this.