One question for Christians

[Statler Waldorf]

Haven't forgotten about you Statler, just don't have time at present to give this my attention. I'll return to this when I can.

Take all the time you need; you also never answered what progressive metal bands you listen to….

The thing about science is since it is changing all the time, it never claims to be absolutely correct. Though we know much about how gravity works, we won't even pretend to say that we know everything about it. Not only is that arrogant, but we will undoubtedly be proven wrong if we persist in that manner. The mistake that religion makes is that it claims to be right, no matter what. Even though the Holey Babble states that there was a flood that covered the earth, geologists have discovered that this never has been the case in the history of life being present on earth. Though geologists might learn new things all the time about the properties of the earth, knowing how floods affect certain areas of the world is mere childsplay to them.

You’re proving my point though; science can never be used to prove the Bible isn’t what it claims to be, because as you have conceded science isn’t inerrant. As for the flood, I do not see how sedimentary rock covering the entire globe isn’t consistent with the flood account.

You don't get to decide what's empirical and what's not. I'm okay that you don't like my evidence, but that's all you have to say.

I didn’t decide that, matter has certain empirically measurable properties such as mass and volume; age is not one of these properties. Age must be inferred based upon rates and amounts.

They never tell the world to trust them, though I'm sure they appreciate people like you running around spouting off what you think they say. They (scientists) just think it's cool that they can go about calculating the age of the universe. I think you're just mad that the calculations have never been close to what the Bible has said about the earth's age. For me, it's just more lemon juice squeezed in the eye of the almighty invisible and grouchy Yahweh.

That’s not the case at all, a person must make anti-Biblical assumptions to arrive at such long ages, of course assuming the Bible is wrong in order to argue that the Bible is wrong is begging the question. If the events in the Bible took place it’s easy to arrive at young ages for the Earth and the cosmos. Not all scientists believe in an old earth and cosmos, you seem to be forgetting that.

Even though humankind can 100% trace their lineage back to Homo Erectus without any error, that's fallible? You need to work on that one, and I'll keep using my "fallible" resources and evidences in the meantime.

Again, tracing your lineage in that manner assumes that common traits are due to common ancestry; that’s an assumption that cannot be proven and yet without it you cannot trace anything. One hundred percent? Didn’t you just say above that nothing in science is absolute?

Unless God used a giant desklamp to light the sunless earth, then where is that light coming from? That's what I'm asking. You can have days without the sun, granted, but what about that light he created? Was he saving it in a plastic bag until he could channel its glow into the sun?

An omnipotent God cannot create light without the Sun? We’re not told where it’s coming from, it could be coming from God Himself; all we know is that it was there on day 1 of creation week.

You mean I can't learn about gravity without the Bible? I can't know that my wife is hot unless the Bible explicitly tells me so? What the fuck are you on about?

No, you could not know these things if we did not live in a Universe created by the God of the Bible.

Oh please. I'm supposed to take your word on it that if there was no God, that I'd be completely helpless and unreasonable?

No, you do not have to take my word for anything, but you cannot make sense of logic and reasoning in a purely material and natural Universe. Christians have no problem making sense of such things.

I'm supposed to take you seriously when you tell me the Bible is true when you don't even hold other scripture up to the same light of scrutiny? I'm afraid you're a little biased in your claims.

I do not think you’re following what I am saying; why should I hold other books up to the same degree of scrutiny when they already failed when I held them to lesser degrees of scrutiny?

But at the same time, Katy Perry doesn't commit genocide against people she doesn't like. We could do this all day.

It’s not her prerogative to do so, God can destroy His creation if He pleases can He not?

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory – - Romans 9:20-23 (ESV)

You think these numbers are supposed to mean something to me, as if having more believers collectively will create god out of thin air, kinda like believing in Fairies in Neverland will keep the little buggers alive.

That’s not what I am doing at all, I am pointing out that your analogies are faulty because they are trying to compare very unordinary and fringe beliefs (alien abductions) with a very ordinary and mainstream belief (God exists), the reason I do not believe someone when they claim to have been abducted by aliens is because it’s not something many people claim happens to them. You believe your Tom (or whatever his name was) ate a sandwich because people claim to eat sandwiches for lunch all the time.

Mormons are tough because they do this: for just about everything, and then proceed to talk at you, thinking you are always in need of teaching. Remnants of my past still come up to bite me in the ass from time to time.

They’re under a lot of pressure from family and friends because they lose such relationships if they become apostates (not to mention they become sons of perdition); so I can see why they refuse to hear opposing viewpoints.

So...you believe in Christ like you always used to...but differently? I'm not familiar with Reformed Christians, but from talking with you it seems a little fundamental yet still somewhat reasonable. Am I close?

Fundamentalist is a greatly overused word, nobody on this forum has ever actually met a true fundamentalist Christian; they merely mislabel any Christian who believes the Bible to be a fundamentalist. I grew up believing in the more contemporary form of Christianity we see today, God wants everyone to be saved and if you just accept Jesus into your heart he’ll take you in…and all of that. Well a few years ago I got destroyed in a debate by a Reformed Christian, and I realized that he was taking a more biblical viewpoint than I was, so I switched over and began studying up. A Reformed Christian is just someone who puts emphasis in the doctrines adhered to by the Christian Reformers (Luther and Calvin). I think it’s a far more consistent position because it rejects man’s authority and makes God look much more like God; rather than some American dad who wants to play catch with his children. Enough rambling though!

And truth will sometimes always elude us. I'm okay with saying that we probably won't ever know everything for a fact. But, the truth is, we determine the validity of claims every day, and they are always judged on a personal level. A courtroom judge has higher stakes, but he/she must do the same, even if the entire truth is never completely uncovered. What a person determines as having a higher or lower standard of evidence is his or her own prerogative, as far as I know.

Interesting, I agree with you that we’ll never know everything, but I certainly think we can know a great deal of things.

Absolutely. I've never been to Sydney, Australia, but there's no reason for me to disbelieve its existence. The proof that it exists is demonstrable: I've seen pictures, movies, met people from Sydney, and there's a robust, verifiable history associated with the place that is well-documented.

So is a Christian allowed to believe God exists because they have no reason to disbelieve in His existence? I am just trying to understand your position.

On the other hand, you'll be hard-pressed to find a person who has been to the Pearly Gates to shake hands with St. Peter, so we cannot verify with demonstrable evidence that the place is real. Same goes for Mt. Olympus and the River Styx.

I’ve never been to Pluto or any of Jupiter’s moons, nor have I met anyone who has.

Yeah, the remarkable thing is that billions of people would be claiming something they have no evidence for...oh, wait, that already happens!

Well I do not agree with you on there being no evidence for God’s existence, I think that’s an oversimplification, but if that were true why do you believe so many people would believe in such a thing?

I made up that part about the greenhouse. So I lied...you're going to argue with me about a lie I deliberately made?

Oh, nope, I misunderstood what you meant, my apologies.

Your made-up boy science may have a high possibility of being wrong...though I'm not so certain you're correct in regards to natural science or the observable world. Sometimes there isn't a possibility of being wrong...sometimes there's just a lack of evidence that hasn't been found yet to supplement what's already known.

Pick up a science text from the 19th Century, or even just the 1950s, the vast majority of it is plain wrong by today’s scientific understanding, why do you think it will be any different 50 years from now when people read early 21st Century scientific works?
I’ll give you another example (let me know if I am boring you); the Bible claims the Universe has a beginning, if I were a Christian living in the early 1920s, and I took the view that we ought to use science to disprove the Bible, I would have rejected this claim and concluded the Bible is not inerrant because it claims the Universe had a beginning and since steady state theory is the popular view of the time period we know the Universe had no finite beginning! So I would have abandoned my faith because of a scientific view that would be completely replaced less than 50 years later; now scientists believe the Universe in fact did have a finite beginning. Science cannot disprove the Bible, and Christians who lose their faith because of it are looking at the whole thing backwards. Science is a wondrous God-given tool, I love it, it’s what I have chosen to do for a living, but scientism is dangerous.