One question for Christians

[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.