Atheism is unreasonable

[Fidel_Castronaut]

It speaks volumes that you believe yourself to be superior after some Google searching and some heavy indoctrination in matters of theorietcal physicists than those who spent their entire lives dedicated to learning and research.

Well I will put it to you this way, Mr. Moderator...unless you have a degree in physics, I expect google to be your friend also.

I'm not a physicist - But I am an academic researcher to PhD level. So yeah, google is my friend. But you won't see me acting silly saying that a 5 minute google search has given me all the information I need to debunk something that minds far superior and far more dedicated than me have devloped over (often) generations.

Again, arrogance, blind arrogance at that, gets you nothing.

It's fairly simple to figure out that you're not in academia or indeed have studied to any high level.

I get my info from those that DO study. And btw, it is simple to figure out that most of these people who are responding to me...it is apparent that they aren't in academia or studied to any high level either.

Maybe, maybe not. But hey, let's recognise the fact that it's you who are dismissing the evidence that is given to you as a rebuttal or indeed the evidence of theories that you are rejecting and giving nothing back but unsupported assertions and claims. You're talking about subjects you don't understand as though you were an expert, and it's painfully obvious that you don't in fact really get anything aside what your apologist websites are quoting to you (and even then it's hit and miss, it seems).

Dismissal of evidenced claims/theories (etc) requires evidence that falsifies that claim. I can see the odd quotation from WLC and the odd use of Kalam here and there. And that's it. Great job. We're all convinced.

'Brevity is the soul of wit'. It's not our fault that we can't figure out what the hell most of your posts are saying.

Yet, dang near every sentence that I make is being quoted and responded to.

Don't be stupid.

Please don't act so puerile.

It is called "the actual factuals".

Don't be stupid.

The bible is only a claim. You can Try and equivocate it to records of governments held in antiquity or to fictional novels like the odyssey, but none of those things are claiming supernatural, life controlling constraints on the lives of every human and neither are they claiming to know how life started or how it will end.

The bible is only a claim? Well, so was the statement "The Bible is only a claim."

Are you ill? Your only rebuttal to the factual statement that the bible is a claim is 'nuh uh'? Wow. Ok...

And that's without going into any detail about the blatant falsities contained in the bible, of which there are many.

Like?

Too many to name. How about the Exodus that never happened (no evidence), or the Mt Sinai that was never visited (no evidence). Or the characters in the bible that never lived to be over 800 years old (no evidence) and so on and so on.

All claims. No evidence.

Nah. They give reasons, not necessarily good ones.

Speak for yourself

Exactly my point. I don't expect you to understand or realise just how badly your arguments have been deconstructed and dismantled on this thread, but I suspect a lot of the members and indeed lurkers have had a good time reading through this train wreck.

So please carry on. You're doing a sterling job of reinforcing the perception that many theists don't know their arse from their elbow.

The old canard of 'I don't have enough faith to be an atheist' is so utterly stupid that I can't think of why a reasonable person would ever utilise it in a serious manner. So I can only conclude that you're not reasonable, and this is evidenced through this thread.

[ManMachine]

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Well I will put it to you this way, Mr. Moderator...unless you have a degree in physics, I expect google to be your friend also.

I'm not a physicist - But I am an academic researcher to PhD level. So yeah, google is my friend. But you won't see me acting silly saying that a 5 minute google search has given me all the information I need to debunk something that minds far superior and far more dedicated than me have devloped over (often) generations.

Again, arrogance, blind arrogance at that, gets you nothing.

I get my info from those that DO study. And btw, it is simple to figure out that most of these people who are responding to me...it is apparent that they aren't in academia or studied to any high level either.

Maybe, maybe not. But hey, let's recognise the fact that it's you who are dismissing the evidence that is given to you as a rebuttal or indeed the evidence of theories that you are rejecting and giving nothing back but unsupported assertions and claims. You're talking about subjects you don't understand as though you were an expert, and it's painfully obvious that you don't in fact really get anything aside what your apologist websites are quoting to you (and even then it's hit and miss, it seems).

Dismissal of evidenced claims/theories (etc) requires evidence that falsifies that claim. I can see the odd quotation from WLC and the odd use of Kalam here and there. And that's it. Great job. We're all convinced.

Yet, dang near every sentence that I make is being quoted and responded to.

Don't be stupid.

It is called "the actual factuals".

Don't be stupid.

The bible is only a claim? Well, so was the statement "The Bible is only a claim."

Are you ill? Your only rebuttal to the factual statement that the bible is a claim is 'nuh uh'? Wow. Ok...

Like?

Too many to name. How about the Exodus that never happened (no evidence), or the Mt Sinai that was never visited (no evidence). Or the characters in the bible that never lived to be over 800 years old (no evidence) and so on and so on.

All claims. No evidence.

Speak for yourself

Exactly my point. I don't expect you to understand or realise just how badly your arguments have been deconstructed and dismantled on this thread, but I suspect a lot of the members and indeed lurkers have had a good time reading through this train wreck.

So please carry on. You're doing a sterling job of reinforcing the perception that many theists don't know their arse from their elbow.

The old canard of 'I don't have enough faith to be an atheist' is so utterly stupid that I can't think of why a reasonable person would ever utilise it in a serious manner. So I can only conclude that you're not reasonable, and this is evidenced through this thread.

---

As per FC's observation, for all you Theists out there...

[LostLocke]

Is that a 60, 90 or 120 degree perfect V6?

Yes

[Esquilax]

So you're still insisting this, despite being given video evidence that G and V don't agree with you?

I will deal with you and that other post tomorrow. Right now I'm dealing with the what I would call......"quick fires"

I don't think "I was wrong, and I didn't bother to research the topic fully before I spoke," would take too long to say.

Because, to be clear, that's what you have to say, when you say one thing about a paper and then I bring in the authors of that paper, who say the exact opposite thing. It's not like you can deny what they said; I offered a freaking video of one of them. If you continue to assert that they mean the exact opposite of what they themselves unambiguously said, you will look like a crazy person, unwilling to disengage from an argument even after you have been definitively proven wrong.

[Whateverist]

I will deal with you and that other post tomorrow. Right now I'm dealing with the what I would call......"quick fires"

If you continue to assert that they mean the exact opposite of what they themselves unambiguously said, you will look like a crazy person, unwilling to disengage from an argument even after you have been definitively proven wrong.

Too late.

[Surgenator]

A hypothesis is potentially falsifiable, by definiton. Whatever God may be, a hypothesis it certainly isn't.

The God hypothesis can be falsified. If you postulate a God that is based on a logically incoherent concept...that makes that God false.

What other method can we falsify God or is this the only way to falsify God? If I define an internally consistent God, does that make him exist?

For something to exist, internal consistency is necessary but it is not sufficient. If you claim there is no way to falsify an interally consistent definition of God, then your God claim is similiar to the orbiting-tea-pot claim.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Nonsense. Theories need not have repeated experiments in order to be validated. Don't take my word for it; look up theories like stellar formation.

Also, the construct "just a theory" in your post leads me to believe that you don't understand the importance of a theory in the scientific hierarchy of understanding. In other words, you're equivocating two different connotations of the word "theory".

Perhaps you should have paid more attention in your high-school science classes.

Ok, so let me just ask you directly...can you give me your best empirical evidence which supports abiogenesis?? If you can't, then you can spare me all the bio-babble.

well, the fact that all life on earth, and virii. -- which consist of nothing but an RNA strand -- use the same five amino bases is a good sign that they have a common origin; and consider how primitive a virus is, it seems that abiogenetic selection is indicated. Furthermore, we've observed simple RNA evolve into comle, strands, meaning that chemical evolution has been observed. The obvious interpretation is that RNA evolved from precursor molecules ... Perhaps we'll see this in the lab one day.

As far as the "biobabble", it's pretty easy to grasp. You ought to check it out some time.

Finally, it'll be interesting to see the changes in your viewpoint once you apply this apparent thirst for evidence to your own premises.

[His_Majesty]

I'm saying that we don't know. I don't know, you don't know, and if you actually bothered to look, you would see that science has done little more than theorize, at this point. We simply do. not. have. sufficient. evidence. Making declarative claims as you are, when the scientific consensus refuses to on account of a lack of proper data from before the Planck time doesn't make you some grand pioneer. It makes you a buffoon stepping on the toes of people whose education you couldn't hope to imitate.

The argument against infinity is independent of past scientific knowledge, present scientific knowledge, and future scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is simply irrelevant when it comes to philosophical problems such as infinite regress.

Which is why you haven't provided a single resource to back that up.

Why is ever since Hubble's discovery, cosmologists have been positing theories that would naturalisticly explain why our universe began to exist...like the Steady State Model...Oscillating models, etc, which is something you wouldn't need to do if you believed our universe is infinite.

Oh, you little fool. I am so glad you decided to disagree with me on this point.

Here is a reference from someone who asked Alexander Vilenkin, one of the authors of the paper in question, and the writer of the quote you posted flat out, "does your theorem prove that the universe must have had a beginning?" and Vilenkin's answer, contrary to what you assert here, is no. All it proves, he says, is that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. Vilenkin also mentions here that if one were willing to entertain the subtleties of the theorem, then the answer to the question of a finite universe would be "no, but..." with a number of possible avenues for discussion. The relevant part, I think, is that despite your quotations and assertions, at no point when directly asked the question does Vilenkin ever assert that the universe is finite.

Well, I don't know about all of that...but what I do know is that William Lane Craig put out there for the record a personal email correspondence with Alexander Vilenkin himself, regarding the theorem and also Lawerence Krauss' deceitful representation of the theorem, which can be seen here http://www.reasonablefaith.org/honesty-t...gv-theorem

And in case you are to lazy to read through the entire page, I will quote you the one good paragraph, from Mr. Vilenkin to Craig..


I think you represented what I wrote about the BGV theorem in my papers and to you personally very accurately. This is not to say that you represented my views as to what this implies regarding the existence of God. Which is OK, since I have no special expertise to issue such judgements. Whatever it's worth, my view is that the BGV theorem does not say anything about the existence of God one way or the other. In particular, the beginning of the universe could be a natural event, described by quantum cosmology.

Dr. Craig is a advocate of the BGV theorem and Vilenkin said that Craig represented the theorem very accurately.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/honesty-t...z3IJ9ysbMq

That sufficiently scuttles your bullcrap right there, but I'm not done. Perhaps you're aware of Alan Guth, another one of the writers of the BGV theorem? Because, see, Alan Guth was willing to go on video for Sean Carrol, in his debate with William Lane Craig, to state that his theorem does not endorse a finite universe model either. Here, see for yourself:





So, it's interesting that you assert that this specific theorem endorses a finite universe model, when two thirds of the authorship disagree. I wonder who we should believe? Some random moron, or the actual authors of the paper?

I have quite a few things to say about this. First, the narrator of the video made some very ridiculous points, and what is funny is the fact that he thought he was REALLY saying someting lol. Second, it is also funny the fact that I am semi-familiar with the Carrol-Craig debate, so when you say "Alan Guth was willing to go on video for Sean Carrol" I immediately thought, "Well, I watched the debate between Carrol/Craig, did I miss something? Because I don't remember seeing Guth "go on video for Sean Carrol" when I watched it.

So then I reluctantly went on ahead to watch the vid that you posted above, and sure enough, no where in the clip or in the debate in general did Guth "go on video for Sean Carrol". So where the hell you got that from, I don't know. Maybe you worded it wrong.

What actually happened in the debate was Carrol "quoted" Guth, but he didn't tell us where he got the quote from at all. He just made the assertion that this is what Guth stated.

Ahhh but in case that isn't enough for you, here is an article from Mr. Guth himself

And in case you don't want to read the entire article, I will just quote you a paragraph that is meant to sting..

"At the present time, I think it is fair to say that it is an open question whether or not eternally inflating universes can avoid having a beginning. In my own opinion, it looks like eternally inflating models necessarily have a beginning. I believe this for two reasons. The first is the fact that, as hard as physicists have worked to try to construct an alternative, so far all the models that we construct have a beginning; they are eternal into the future, but not into the past. The second reason is that the technical assumption questioned in the 1997 Borde-Vilenkin paper does not seem important enough to me to change the conclusion, even though it does undercut the proof."

http://www.counterbalance.org/cq-guth/didth-frame.html

And here is another stinger, Alexander Vilenkin is seen here describing in detail the BGV theorem...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IJLZO7o4Ak

Any expanding universe with a rate greater than 0 meants the criterion to have a beginning, as Mr. Vilenkin states.

I'm familiar enough with Kalam to dismiss it as ridiculous. Did you know that it was a modification of an earlier cosmological argument, the chief change being the addition of the words "begins to exist" to the original premise "everything has a cause"? No evidence was discovered between then and the advent of Kalam to cause this, it was just changed by fiat assertion to get around the "what caused god?" problem. And that's the big black mark on these kinds of arguments, that they change on a dime to define problems with them out of existence absent any kind of real world evidence.

So freakin' what? Philosophical arguments can be modified just like scientific theories can be modified. Please.

So basically, "don't use all dem big words, they scare me!"

No need to use big words to make non-sophisticated people feel like they are sophisticated.

Oh, so you can't count from one to two to three? Because I can, despite the fact that we have an infinite amount of numbers. Here I go: one, two, three, four, five! See? I even went two beyond, to show you just how fucking stupid you're being.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the tasked that was asked of you. I like to know if you would be willing to count all of the numbers in between 1 and 2, and let me know when you've done this.

One cannot run for eternity, as eternity is not a discrete unit of time, it's an expression of an infinite length of time, which I would by definition not have been running for if you stopped me at any point.

In this case, eternity is synanomous with "infinite".

But the analogy can still be useful: say I start at any point on an infinitely long road, and I plant a flag at that point before running down the road in one direction. If I turned around and ran back the same distance- which would be a limited, discrete distance despite the endless expanse of the road- the flag would still be there at the position I left it.

Dude, you've just completely changed the scenario of the analogy. The analogy was for you to have been running for an INFINITE AMOUNT OF TIME, and if that is the case, then there was no starting point. Of course the distance from any two intervals will be finite. If I start walking from the 50 yard line to the 10 yard line, the points in-between are finite. But if I am walking towards a destination that is an infinite amount of footsteps away, I will never reach it...and if I do reach it, then how many footsteps would I have taken? An infinite? Well, what is the number before infinity? The entire concept is absurd, and if it can't happen in an analogy, it can't happen in reality.

The same is true of an eternal time span: if I'm on earth under the same gravitational physics as usual, one day will still pass in 24 hours, despite the endless length of time. And another day would pass. And despite there being an eternity, my perception of time can still demarcate individual passed units of time, to the degree that I could mark off a single week within eternity easily enough. It's just seven 24 hour periods, even in a space where the remaining time is infinite.

But before 24 hours can come to pass, you would have had to traverse an infinite number of 24 hours which preceded the 24 hours that just passed. This cannot happen!!

What is even more absurd is the fact that if time is infinite, then that would mean that there would have had to be an infinite number of seconds, minutes, hours, years, days, months, years, decades, centuries, milleniums....the total "set" of each of these aspects of time would be infinite, despite each aspect being a different lenght of time!!!!

That is about as absurd as you will get.

Under your logic, any attempt to measure infinity instantly vanishes because there would still be the same amount left after measuring, but you have no means of demonstrating that.

Just did.

If you were working with two undefined quantities you couldn't stop. But therein lies the problem, because you wouldn't be working with two undefined infinite quantities, you'd be working with one. The moment you stopped me to ask how long I'd been running, I would have ceased running for eternity, and have begun running for a finite length of time relative to the moment you asked me. If you interrupt a supposedly eternal activity but time keeps on passing after it has stopped, then the activity is no longer eternal. Given that, I could tell you the definitely finite answer you wanted, and be able to run back in the opposite direction for that span of time.

Whether or not you stopped running is irrelevant, because you don't necessarily have to stop...you could just be running for eternity, and simply turned back around, and run in the opposite direction...therefore your movement would never stop. But that doesn't matter anyway. The question is simple; how are you able to reach a point moving forward (when you were stopped by me), but you are unable to reach an equal point running the opposite direction (if you ran equal distance the opposite direction and and stopped). I'd like an answer, please.

You can traverse finite points within infinity, providing you are inside it, experiencing it actively as it passes. Think of it like this: if you were trapped inside an eternity of time, and you had on a functioning watch, that watch would still keep time, yes? So you could monitor that, say, an hour had passed inside that eternity. How much time had that eternity existed before you got there? Eternity. How long will it continue now that you're in there? Eternally. But in your subjective experience, one hour has passed. If I were, as your initial example indicated, a baby being born in an infinity, an infinite number of babies would have come before, but I would still have a subjective sense of time passing. An infinite sequence can still have discrete individual items that come up in that sequence: seven does not cease to exist merely because there is an infinite number of numbers preceding it.

This could not happen, because again, when you analogize going back in time equal distance, there is no discreet equal point...so if there is no discreet equal point going backwards, then there can be no points moving forward.

So now you don't understand what causality is?

I don't know what "causal infinity" is..no.

You're right. But if you start counting numbers, eventually you will get to seven. What you're doing is saying that, say, I'm the number seven and we're counting, only when we get to six you demand that I count eight before I count seven. And when I get to eight you demand that I count nine before seven, and so on.

Ok, 7 is the lucky number. I want you to count down all of the negative numbers on the timeline in numerical sequence and let me know when you've successfully counted all of the numbers and arrive at lucky #7. Can you do that for me?

So first of all, there is not an "infinity number." Infinite is a concept representing an endless span of numbers. So your hypothetical is non functional from the get go. But what you're saying is that if you said to me that you'd deposit one dollar in my bank account for an infinite span of days, at no point in that span would I ever have seven dollars. It's moronic.

Ok...well lets substitute "number" with "amount"...so from now on I will say "infinite amount"...whether number or amount, the absurdity remains...but getting back to the analogy, I said a trillion, and if you admit that "at no point in that span would you ever receive the money"...how are you able to recognize the fact that you infinity cant be traversed so that you would receive the money, but grant it when it comes to the "birth" analogy?

Makes no sense.

Because in an infinite set discrete entities still exist. For an infinity of births to happen you would need an eternity; by definition there is now enough time for all of the births to occur, including mine. It would just so happen that if you tried counting babies on either side of me, you would never reach the end.

So if your birth would come to pass eventually, if you fast forwarded into the future the equal number of births that was traversed to reach your birth, what number would that be?? What number???

So does that mean two doesn't exist, and is not a number?

It is a number, no doubt it...but numbers don't exist in reality beyond mere concepts. They represent quantities. They are just concepts...like there are an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 2, but this is just theoretically speaking...not actually.

And that is exactly why you can count from 1 to 2 easily, but you would never reach 2 if you counted all of the numbers between 1 and 2.

I posited a third alternative just a few posts back, moron: recursive time, cycling from a finite span of forward moving time, into a similarly finite span of reverse moving time. So let's not go into the false dichotomies again. But the point I was making, which you missed again, is that we do not know whether time is finite or infinite or not.

I could care less about your view on time. Either time had a beginning, or it didn't. Plain and simple. If it did, then a timeless cause is needed/necessary...if it didn't, then you would need to explain the infinity problem regarding the events within time, and so far, you've failed.

It's not a problem, because I'm saying we don't have sufficient evidence to make a conclusion one way or the other, not that time is infinite, you loon. Pay some fucking attention.

Temper, temper. We do have sufficient evidence. Don't get upset with me because you can't solve problems that are logically absurd logical absurdities. Relax. No one can

There's no cosmologist who has been able to come to that conclusion as a result of their professional work. Must you oversimplify absolutely everything you hear?

I don't recall ever saying or implying science being able to draw the God conclusion. Science only confirms the second premise of the kalam argument, which is "the universe began to exist". And from that point, we draw our own conclusions from there.

Which demonstrates the problem with using logical syllogisms as proof; my syllogism functioned perfectly on logic, but finds a stumbling block in not being factually accurate. Logic is always subordinate to reality.

So you are using a non-sequitur as proof that "logic being subordinate to reality? Very well then...I will leave you to your absurdities.

Yes, to literally be omniscient would mean that, but all you have is the claim of omniscience. Put it this way: how could a claimed omniscient be sure that there weren't unknown unknowns to them? Your answer can't just be "they're omniscient!" because that's circular reasoning. How could they possibly verify it?

Well, if he isn't sure, then he isn't omniscient, right? If he ever gets to the point where he has to ask himself "How can I be sure of X", then guess what, he ISN'T omniscient. The point is, God would never ask such a question, nor can he be "stumped" by anything or anyone

So basically, you don't want to listen, so can I sum up a complex concept in a simple soundbite? No, and fuck you for trying to make me. Read the fucking paragraph like an adult.

"For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."

No. That's my point: neither of us can, because information is conceptual, and not literal. It exists in minds, not in objects, and it does not require an intelligent creator to exist.

But would a computer code/program exist without intelligent design? Yes or no?

So, we can add evolution to the list of things you don't understand, then.

Understanding is one thing, believing and accepting is another. Kind of like your attitude towards Christianity, right?

You could never evolve wings, because individuals do not evolve.

Ohhhh.

But you could pass specific traits that are conducive to the development of wings on to your offspring, because populations do evolve over successive generations. Additionally, not that I think you'll actually understand this, but humanity's survival niche doesn't require that we fly; we evolved- through random mutations, to avoid the simpering "but whyyyyy?" in response- in such a way that cooperation and intelligence were our survival traits. Bears are not a sufficient selection pressure to a modern human for the need for an escape tactic to evolve.

Bio-babble.

And even if they were, you could just die off instead. Maybe your lineage just wasn't fit enough to survive, that's always an option.

Or maybe none of it happened in the first place..that's always an option too.

Do you not know what words mean? Complicated intelligence that can react to a wider range of scenarios in appropriate ways are a survival advantage.

Question begging. The origin of intelligence is what is being asked of you. When you start your sentence with "complicated intelligence", there is a huge chunk of info missing from there....on the "left" side of things.

Selection pressures in the environment. Those organisms that were better able to react to situations quickly and in more nuanced ways were able to survive longer, as all the other ones that couldn't react appropriately to, say, a predator, were caught and eaten.

Again, you are fast-fowarding..putting the cart before the horse. "Those organisms that were better able to react to situations quickly were able to survive longer"...if you are telling me that organisms needed consciousness to react quickly to survive longer, that is presupposing consciousness when the origin of consciousness is what I'd like to be explained.

And if I can't tell you, does that make it untrue?

Not at all. Mind/body dualism is a problem for anyone that doesn't believe in intelligent design.

As it happens, even modern human brains aren't instantly thinking; there's a developmental curve that is quite well mapped in medical science.

I am talking about ORIGINS.

Maybe go look at how fetuses develop, eh? We know when specific parts of the brain "switch on" in babies, after all. Just asserting "you can't make one work now with your hands!" doesn't mean it didn't evolve. That's a total non sequitur.

Fetus development is all part of the process which, as a whole, was created and engineered by an intelligent designer. If you take ID out of the equation, then how in the hell does inanimate matter begin to think?

No, I wouldn't. Mostly because "specified" refers to the origin of the information in question, and not its function.

Well, what is the origin of this information?

Information is a conceptual label placed upon predictable patterns, in this case within chemical reactions. There is no information inside DNA, there are chemicals that can be read as information later. And if you think it is otherwise then I ask you again to show me a picture of the information in DNA. Not the code itself, but the information that you think exists as a discrete entity within it.

Just take 15 minutes of your life and watch this vid. It actually answers your question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN5uo0TBd_Q

It's plenty supported; perhaps open up a goddamn biology textbook one of these days?

Hmm...just above you said you didn't know, now all of a sudden "its plenty supported".

It's a chemical reaction. The information is arranged in specific ways because that is the ways that the corresponding chemicals react and bond with one another. Like chemical reactions do.

Again, the magnetic letters will "bond" to the white board, but you wont get sentences to formulate with an intelligent mind/hand from the outside reaching in.

Yes, if we aren't talking about consciousness specifically, but about something else. What, am I just supposed to let you dismiss everything I say until I can come up with a unified theory for the origins of everything that came before it? Stick on the fucking topic, don't be all "oh yeah? Well, your observation that the sky is blue is invalid, because you don't know how the universe came to be! How can I just let you use the universe as a gateway to something else without having you first empirically explain to me where the universe came from?!"

I am not interested in your red herring rhetoric...I just want a naturalistic explanation of how inanimate matter came to life and begin talking and thinking. If you can't answer that question, then everything else you spew is meaningless.

Quit your fucking dodging and address the issue at hand. Besides, I have explained consciousness above, in as much detail as is currently available. Your response was nothing more than "I don't understand those words! This can't be true!"

You didn't explain anything, buddy. You gave a half-asses explanation that was question begging. I will ask again...how can inanimate matter get to the point of living, thinking, and talking?

I already gave you an example of a code that isn't intentionally placed. Your response was "codes are intentionally placed, therefore that isn't a code!"

Why would that be my response, when I believe that codes that are intentionally placed ARE codes?? That is the second time you misrepresented what I said.

Which means that if you're calling DNA a code, and your definition of a code includes the thing you are trying to prove DNA to be, then you are begging the question.

Show me an article regarding DNA that rejects DNA being referred to as a code containing information, please. I will predict that you will be unable to, therefore wasting my precious time.

It's not instructions. It's chemical reactions, the expression of which results in an organism. Calling DNA instructions for an organism is, again, an analogy to explain something complex to a layman.

The article stated that it is...and that is coming from a "fucking" scientist.

Or someone threw a bunch of magnetic letters at the board, and only the letters "I, N, F, O, R, M, A, T, I, O, N" stuck to it, in that sequence. It may be unlikely, but it's not impossible; how would you determine which of those two possibilities is what occurred?

I am not saying it isn't possible, I am saying it isn't PROBABLE or PLAUSIBLE.

Except that we aren't talking about an entirely random process with evolution, because natural selection exists. Successes are kept, and failures are dropped.

How would a mindless and blind process know what to keep and not to keep...and what is a failure or success? Where did this concept of "quality control" come from? Something that can't see or think? Wow.

A more accurate analogy would be hundreds of magnetic letters, where individual words are allowed to be retained when they form at random. That way, you'd end up with plenty of words in a relatively short period of time, and in terms of evolution we've had millions of years.

I see you are worshiping your "time" god. I will leave you to it.

It doesn't bother me one way or the other, truthfully. But if you insist: Here. Not only do we have his tomb and his body, but a number of other sources attesting to his existence.

Are you suitably chastened?

*sigh* I said "EXTERNAL EGYPTIAN" sources. SMH

Sure, but without outside corroboration then each of those books remains a claim made without corroboration. Just saying "it could be true anyway!" doesn't reduce the fact that all we have is the original claim itself.

You are moving goal posts. If the books weren't compiled into the Bible, each specific book would be corroborated by the other books.

Five different anonymous sources written decades after the events in question happened by people that could never have met any of the principle players involved with the claims. Why is it you christians never complete that sentence right?

How do you know that the authors never met Jesus???

You would need actual evidence, extraordinary evidence in fact, as they are extraordinary claims, to demonstrate that they are more than superstitions.

What kind of extraordinary evidence?

Observing that the real world has never had a confirmed miracle, nor does it seem to be one where miracles are even possible, is not a presupposition. It's just reality.

As far as I'm concerned, the real world never observed life from nonlife, or consciousness from unconsciousness. Yet, that is believed with no problem?

Hey, don't ask me to comment on church tradition at the time. But considering we know when those epigraphs were added to the books, and it was very much after they were written and the authors long dead, it's not a debatable point whether or not they were added as an accurate reflection of the author. They weren't. That's just history.

Actually, we have evidence that whoever wrote the Gospels lived during the time of the events, and lived in the geographically location in the narratives. So this wasn't some "long after the facts stuff". And AGAIN, Paul's letters were written in the 50's AD (his first letters), and his letters confirms the Resurrection.

Papias never met Matthew

So because I never met Abe Lincoln, that mean he didn't make the Gettysburg Address?

, and the epigraph of the book was added without his input by people who equally did not know who the original author was.

How do you know what the people knew? Or are you just assuming shit?

Papias was using third hand information to come to his conclusion, and he had no better evidence than anyone else with which to form his thoughts.

Third hand or not...the Gospels contain information that only someone that was there would know. Again, they all have information that only someone living during that time, in that location, with that specific person would know. So when Papias states that Matthew wrote a Gospel, it should come as no surprise, since Matthew was one of the disciples and he would know the things that was written.

I mean my goodness, why is it so hard to believe that out of the 12 disciples, two of them wrote a freakin Gospel?? No wonder there are so many unbelievers in this world...you people can't even get yourselves to accept simple shit...let along something like a Resurrection.

Mistaken seems likely, though I'm not going to discount lying; wouldn't be the first church dude to make shit up.

Nor would he have been the first church dude to tell the truth about shit.

One thing he couldn't have been was right; he had no way of verifying, and neither do we.

We also have no way of verifying whether or not Hannibal rode war elephants, that is actually King Tuts body, or that Caesar was stabbed. But you have no problems accepting stuff like that, but when it comes to whether or not Matthew wrote a Gospels...awwwww man, lets put on our skeptics hat and be realllll critical of shit??

It is a double standard.

If you want to claim the book was written by the Matthew as Papias did, you are doing it on no evidence, as he did, and are therefore making it up.

We don't have any evidence of anything, in that case. Were you there when Lincoln was assasinated? No, you weren't. How do you know he was assasinated? Because of what you were told, right? Well, Papias said that Matthew wrote a Gospel based on what he was told....both of you were told something about an event that happened in the past...so why should the event that you accept as true be "true" and the even that he accepted as "true" be false?

That is about the biggest double standard I've ever seen.

This is not especially compelling. 40 years is plenty of time for information to become distorted

Not if the books were written during the lifetime of the disciples. That would mean you would have someone there that can say "thats not how it happened, it happened this way". Second, the "40 yr" thing is when the books were written, but the actual belief in the Resurrection itself was a belief that was held right after the cross. Third, again, Paul actually met the original disciples, and it is at that time when he received the "creed". So there was no time for the information to become distorted when you have a person that was alive from 33 AD to 65 AD that was preaching the ORIGINAL word and was kicking it with the ORIGINAL disciples.

Nope, not buying it.

, especially in a superstitious culture that has no real infrastructure for accurately transcribing information.

Um, so during that time, what would be the real infrastucture for accurately transcribing information??

Given that none of the gospel authors ever claimed to have met Jesus, are we meant to draw precisely the opposite conclusion? Absence of evidence really is evidence of absence when it comes to books, you know.

So because they never claimed to have met Jesus, they never met Jesus? I've never claimed to meet Deanna Nolan (former WNBA star), but does that mean that I never met her? No. Non-sequitur.

And yet we have plenty of written corroborations for the lives of other people, such as the rulers who were alive during Jesus' lifetime. It's just the man himself who exists in this pit of silence.

Yet Jesus' legacy surpassed any ruler that there was written so much more about? Hmmm.

Second hand with a twenty year gap between the events and their recording. Super trustworthy.

Paul's account was second hand...the source of his information was first-hand. Second, the twenty year gap means nothing if it is from a witness. I can recall taking a trip to Seattle Washington to visit my uncle, and guess when that happened? 20 years ago!!!

Paul doesn't have the same level of cross-confirmatory dialogue and additional recordings that we do for MLK. You're trying to equate one source and no recordings with multiple first hand accounts and plenty of recordings. It doesn't work that way.

First off, I am talking about legacy. MLK's legacy is still strong over 40 years after his death, and there are people still alive today that was there, over 40 years after MLK's death. That is the point, the Gospels were written during the lifetime of the disciples. I don't know why you keep making a fuss about the time gap. It is irrelevant unless we are talking between 60-100 years later.

Assuming he even existed...

Goal posts moved again.

I don't necessarily deny the existence of Jesus, just his divine nature. I just find it strange that we don't find this level of silence with other historical figures of the time, especially considering his supposed impact.

So a man with very little impact created the world's largest religion??

And there's still a huge bridge to cross, between proving that a man existed, and proving that the son of god existed.

That is easy.

---

To my knowledge there are no external references to Tutankamun's existence.

But it is accepted. Yet the demand for external evidence for Jesus is so dang high? Double freakin' standard.

There may be references that we have not found yet.

Same thing with biblical claims.

The point is moot, however, since we have the tomb, the Mummy, and the treasures thereof, and well recorded, though damaged, records from much of Egypt and the lands they ruled at the time.

You don't know whose body that is, Beccs. You were told it is King Tut, and you ran with it. Plain and simple.

Not so the Jesus myth, which comes from 1300 years later.

Huh?

- No body

Because it was Resurrected, perhaps?

- No tomb

Maybe because we haven't "found" it yet. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

- No records outside one particular book

The Bible could be true regardless of whether there is any corroborating external sources, and that is without even saying that we don't have any.

- which are contradictory (and in a time when we have some very complete records)

Please enlighten me on the contradictory assertion.

- Only "records" written well after the time of the "events"

If that is the case I should never see a "war" film that is older than 120 years old...because the film would be based on events that were well after the time that it allegedly happened.

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So how do you explain the numerous flaws and nonsensical design elements of the human body, in the face of this supposed perfect design? Why do my eyes project images upside down, for example? Why are human spinal nerves better suited to a forward facing, quadrupedal gait- say, like our evolutionary predecessors had- than an upright one? Why do we have an extra set of toes that do nothing to help support our weight? Or knees that bend at just the right angle to incite arthritis? Why is there a blind spot in every human eye?

I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. And those are just general human design flaws, I'm not even taking into account all the ones specific to individuals; if the human body is designed so specifically and exactly then why do I have to wear glasses?

The naturalistic explanation is the second law of thermodynamics. The Christian theological explanation is sin and the fall of man.

---

Even if you find a perfect donor, your damned to special medication for life, since your body still tries to reject the strange organ. That's not how the body works.

When former NBA player Alonzo Mourning needed a kidney donation, he wasn't looking for a donation from a kangaroo, he was looking for a donation from another human being, because the parts actually fitted.

[The Valkyrie]

Oh, where to begin on the nonsense?

So much crap, so little time.

I'll shoot this down after the weekend. In the meantime, the others here are doing a great job countering your BS.

[bennyboy]

@His_Majesty

You are pretty good at philosophically undermining simple positions.

But there's a problem-- your ideas about God and Jesus cannot be shown to represent reality. Playing with paradoxes, talking about infinity, etc. is fun, but you are lacking any sensible evidence at all. Nor have you established any philosophical need for the God idea that couldn't be as well solved by another philosophical quantity.

Philosophical niceties are essentially legal work: "Can you guarantee, ONE HUNDRED percent, that the guy you saw rape and kill your wife wasn't actually a doppelganger created in a secret Russian lab to undermine the American government? CAN YOU FOR SURE?" "Ummmmm. . . it's possible I was hallucinating, but that seems highly improbable." "SEE!? It COULD have been a doppelganger. You have unwittingly admitted it!"

So stop trying to sell your secret Russian doppelganger, and stop the rest of your tap dancing, and demonstrate that your God idea is real. If you can't, then eventually all the hot air will dissipate, people will get bored of reading through irrational text walls, and you'll lose your audience. And your failure to convince will, undoubtedly, make Baby Jesus cry.