One question for Christians

[Jackalope]

The speed of light has never been determined in a true vacuum, we can't be sure how much light slows down due to gravity, nor can we be sure how fast light travels when gravity has little affect on it. When the speed of light was determined it was under the effect of gravity. Thus I'm saying light as a measurement of distance due to it's speed can not be considered the most reliable devise, and seeing that light is affected by gravity the color shift may not be so reliable either.

Regarded the bolded bit, the speed of light has been measured independently, both within and without Earth's atmosphere, many times - since the late 17th century, and within the margin of error for a particular experiment, the measurements are in agreement.

If you're suggesting that there is enough variability in the speed of light to allow for young earth claims, you're going to have to come up with some mechanism that would allow for the speed of light to increase by many orders of magnitude while staying coherent with all other observations.

Rotsa ruck with that one, GC.

P.S. There's a damn good reason why the speed of light has never been measured in a "true vacuum". Do you know why?

[YahwehIsTheWay]

Whew, thank you for clarifying. DP will be happy to hear it.

I hate that guy. Most of you are happy to just deny the existence of our Lord but he emasculates Him and turns Him into a detached hippy scientist that can't even be bothered to firebomb a city full of gay people.

In any event, I'm mostly here to correct the dumb ass phony Christians who think they can treat the Wholly Babble like a software license agreement (scroll to the end and click "I agree") or the sissy namby pamby Christians who think that Gawd's Holey Word like a buffet table where they can select all the homophobia but still eat their shell fish and refrain from stoning disobedient little children in the street.

You ignorant heathen trash who go around thinking for yourselves are beyond hope. The Lord has sent you a strong delusion (in all that "science" and "logic") that he can torture you for kicks after you die. Better you than me, I say.

Bottom line: No, he's not omnipotent. That's just marketing hype. But he's still going to kill and then torture you for all eternity, praise the sweet name of Jesus.

---

care to try to prove that I'm not a Christian again?

[Godscreated]

@ Texas Sailor, please take a look at my religious view below. Man why do people not read everything people write. Just looking to criticize I guess.

---

The speed of light has never been determined in a true vacuum, we can't be sure how much light slows down due to gravity, nor can we be sure how fast light travels when gravity has little affect on it. When the speed of light was determined it was under the effect of gravity. Thus I'm saying light as a measurement of distance due to it's speed can not be considered the most reliable devise, and seeing that light is affected by gravity the color shift may not be so reliable either.

Regarded the bolded bit, the speed of light has been measured independently, both within and without Earth's atmosphere, many times - since the late 17th century, and within the margin of error for a particular experiment, the measurements are in agreement.

If you're suggesting that there is enough variability in the speed of light to allow for young earth claims, you're going to have to come up with some mechanism that would allow for the speed of light to increase by many orders of magnitude while staying coherent with all other observations.

Rotsa ruck with that one, GC.

P.S. There's a damn good reason why the speed of light has never been measured in a "true vacuum". Do you know why?

If one exist it's not on earth, space is the standard for vacuum even though it contains particles, if there is a true vacuum it might reside between galaxies, something we will probably never know. No man made vacuum is space close but not space. Even with light speed tested in space it's still to close to earth.

[Statler Waldorf]

Not subconsciously; linguistically, as a matter of conversational convention. Much in the same way that you and I reference ancient gods when we invoke the days of the week or months of the year.

Is scripture not allowed to use such language for convenience? I smell special pleading.

Or when we exclaim "JESUS!" when we see oncoming danger. Like I said, tradition is a powerful thing.

That’s a habitual reaction, I doubt someone writing for NASA types “sunrise” or “sunset” without even realizing it. There is a good reason for doing it and you have yet to touch on it, Stimbo was closer.

OK, so you're assuming another light source that Yahweh took away after the sun was created? Kind of like a temporary brace to hold up a ceiling while construction on a supporting wall is done, to be taken out once the support structure is complete? Scripture doesn't say so but I'll let you have that ret-con.

I am not assuming anything; scripture says light was created on day 1, so obviously it existed prior to the Sun.

Fine then. At least you're not a flat-earther or a geo-centrist. Glad you listen to science and reject the Bible at least some of the time. You and YahwehIsTheWay can debate these point. He says we live on a flat earth and the sun revolves around it because scripture says so. In fact, a debate on scripture between the two of you on geo-centrism and flat-earth as revealed in the Bible might be fun.

I am not here to debate Christians. Scripture doesn’t teach the Earth is flat, that’s obvious by passages in Joshua 10 and in Luke 17, the shape of the Earth was obvious to ancient peoples whenever ships would disappear over the horizon. Washington Irving perpetuated the myth that everyone thought the Earth was flat until the Middle Ages, but that’s all it is, a myth.

And you wonder why I don't take your arguments seriously?

No, I don’t wonder at all, irrational people don’t take rational arguments seriously. I am perfectly fine making such arguments and you allowing them to stand un-refuted, makes the debate really easy to win.

First of all, so are you seriously suggesting that the earth is older than the sun?

You already posted the chronology of Genesis 1.

Second of all, science is self-correcting and has a process of peer-review to ferret out faulty experiments and conclusions. Scripture can neither correct itself nor is there any peer-review process. For this reason, I trust science over any scripture.

So you’re using science to justify your use of science? Nice circularity. Scripture is self-attesting and infallible, science is fallible. Go ahead and take a fallible source over an infallible one, but that just makes you irrational.

Thirdly, to say we can't use science to dispute scripture is like saying we can't use reality to disprove fantasy. OK, what can I use then, since reality and facts are pesky things that I'm not allowed to use?

You’re using question-begging epithets to try and prove a point, which again makes you irrational. You cannot use a source that we know is fallible to try and prove another source is also fallible, that’s pretty basic reasoning.

You can look up into the sky on a clear night, right?

I can.

This means that the Andromeda Galaxy is at least 2 million years old.

Nope, it’s impossible to know that, you can stipulate it, but that does not prove anything.

“That light requires the same time to traverse the path A → M as for the path B → M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity” – Einstein, Relativity: The special and general Theory, 1961

Not 6,000 years old. Or 10,000 years.

Appealing to a mere stipulation does nothing to prove it’s any older.

The sky is not a dome.

Why not?

b]Exodus 31:17[/b] It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

No, someone can be refreshed without being tired (the Pepsi I am drinking is rather refreshing, and yet I am not tired), if the verse was wanting to suggest God was reinvigorated after resting because he was tired it would have used the word ravach. It also would have not used the word shabat for rest because that means to pause or cease exertion or even to celebrate; it has nothing to do with needing a break. The way refreshed is used here means more of a sense of satisfaction (as in the case of cooling air or a cold drink), which is consistent with what we also read in Genesis 1:31, it does not mean God was tired and needed a nap. You only possess a very basic level of understanding of scripture.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable”

- Isaiah 40:28 (ESV)

“He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.”
- Psalm 121:3-4 (ESV)

Poor guy was bushed after doing all that work.

Nope, just satisfied, and it was wondrous work.

The universe is stranger than we can imagine.

You dodged my question, at what point in time was time created? Created by what?

By our research now, it seems that time and space and matter are inter-related in one fabric. Did you know that time moves more quickly as you get away from gravity sources? And it slows down as you move toward them? That's why satellites have to compensate for this difference.

Yup, which is why a God who created all matter and who Himself is immaterial would be timeless and eternal, funny how that actually works eh?

The absolutely needless redundancy of the sun in this scenario demonstrates an example of the lack of understanding and thought that went into this myth. You're trying to account for the bad writing of people who obviously didn't know what they were talking about.

Light can exist without the Sun; tell me you knew that….please.

What reason is there to believe in it? Where is the proof of its divine inspiration?

Simple, if scripture isn’t inerrant all of reality is rendered unintelligible.

That's why physicists use the term 'spacetime', as a way of describing the lockstep interconnectedness of the two. Altering one in any way will affect the other. Indeed, you can't have one without the other. I agree the phraseology can be confusing but it's hardly "non-sense" unless distorted to be so; blame instead the limitations of the English, and occasionally Latin and Greek, language.

But to answer your rhetorical question, space and time were 'created' at the same moment and then matter came along later once the Universe had expanded enough such that the initial plasma state had cooled to the point at which particles could form.

They were created by what and at the same moment in what?.....time? Time and space were created at the same moment in time, that statement is non-sense.

Telling me that something is God-breathed (and thank you for defining this term for me) is the same as telling me that Santa Claus called you on the telephone and told you to write down his naughty and nice list, after which you proceeded to propagate this information to everyone. I can't take you on your word because, first, you would need to prove that Santa is real, and, second, I don't care who Santa thinks is naughty or nice. Even if the god of the bible were real, I still would not worship him because I don't like with what people have written about him.

No, this falsely assumes that the existence of God is something that is reasoned to, rather than the foundation for all reason.

Thanks for looking out for me. But do you apply the same standard that you use to believe in the Bible to Al-Quran or the Bhagavad Gita? I would hope so, or your words of comfort would mean nothing to me.

You’re welcome; I’ve got your back! Yes, I actually hold scripture to a higher standard than any of those.

Fair enough. Although you say that I don't accurately represent your positions and doctrines, I feel that the job of doing that should be up to you, as the representative. Instead, it's up to me to understand your point of view.

I only said that because you were arguing against positions I do not hold to, rather than first asking me what the doctrine of inspiration all entails.

I do know what "God-breathed" means, and I was instead poking fun at it, because I think the concept is simply ridiculous, and the words themselves sound funny.

Poke all the fun you like, but it doesn’t do anything to support your position.

You're right. I was misappropriating my words. Let me take a step back and instead say instead that smart men were making the best approximations at how their world works. Due to discoveries of our days, their assertions look really dumb.

Or, smart men of the day were inspired by God to write down His words, and therefore nothing you read in scripture is actually wrong when interpreted in accordance with its literary purpose.

I would say that sometimes we appeal to special knowledge without realizing that we do so. Any assertion that says that there is an invisible god and the justification for believing such a concept always takes special knowledge, or special pleading. The belief itself is special, as it cannot be proven with demonstrable evidence.

Belief in God doesn’t require special knowledge though; billions of people get to that point without knowledge unavailable to anyone else.

Ah, shit. It wasn't a personal attack, but if you feel attacked, then I'm sorry. English colloquial speech inserts the Second-person voice "you" for the more accurate in this situation Third-person voice "one". Check it: "You are a special kind of retard if you want to believe that" should have been written " One[/be] is a special kind of retard if [b]he or she wants to believe that". That's my mistake, and I'll take the rap for it.

Well either way, you’re implying I am retarded for believing what I believe, which is obviously not true.

As for your explanation that follows...well, I agree. And that's what I was pointing out: that if we take those words written by the authors in Genesis about the sun and the moon to mean anything more, whether it be that they are light-sources or cheese, or whatever, then that person is making an assumption based on their own bias.

I totally agree, then why are we debating this? The Moon and the Sun are both lights, I have no issue with that statement.

No, you chose to ignore the contradictions because you read the Bible with Rose-colored glasses, as evidenced by the fact that you think it's unerring due to a doctrine that says all words in it are "God-breathed". I'll chalk this up to brain-washing, since my time in the Mormon Church gives me some insight on how that looks. Just because you choose to ignore the contradictions, doesn't mean they aren't there.

No, no, no; Christians believe that God cannot contradict Himself, so if you can provide an actual real straight-up internal logical contradiction (“A” and “Not A” at the same time and in the same sense/relationship) then it would refute Biblical inerrancy. The problem is nobody can provide one because all the examples they give do not fit the definition. Were you raised Mormon?

And this is why I gave you rep. Your cool, calm demeanor keeps an A.D.D. guy like me on track. Tangents are a way of life for a firebrand like myself, and I do appreciate your efforts.

I do not mind partaking in a discussion that has taken itself off course a bit (especially when the topic is more interesting than the OP, like in our case here), but I wanted to keep us on point for a skosh because the topic was very important. I think we’re on the same page more now, so if you’d like to discuss anything else, I will follow you willingly down that rabbit hole.

This is a good answer to my question about how you know how Yahweh thinks due to the fact that you can plainly read about his actions and words in your holy book. Most Xians are reluctant to admit this because they often claim the contradictory statement, "God is unknowable". However, it's these same actions and words that steer me clear of the god of the Bible. As I said before, even if he were real, I could not worship this guy. Modeling my morality after his own would make me a disreputable character indeed.

Sure, we’ll never know everything there is to know about God, but as far as He has revealed Himself through His word and the things He has made we can have knowledge of Him.

Okay, I'll concede a few things here. You're right that it doesn't prove all claims are true, but the Pink Unicorn/Invisible Dragon analogy stands as a good example for outrageous claims needing proof.

Yes, but I do not feel the Creator of the Universe is in the same category as an invisible dragon or invisible pink unicorn (still trying to figure out how something that is invisible can also be pink ).

Jimmy John from the office tells you that he ate a sandwich for lunch. Even though this is entirely plausible, it doesn't make it automatically true. We believe Jimmy though, because our experience tells us that eating a sandwich for lunch is not only possible and probably true, but there's also no reason to disbelieve him, as it doesn't really matter in the end if he ate a sandwich or a burrito. Our standard of evidence is very low, and the evidence is our human experience with hearing claims like this.

You believe Jimmy ate a sandwich because there’s no reason to disbelieve him? Well, now that sounds like all claims are assumed to be true until a reason to doubt them is given….no?

On the other hand, Susan Simpson tells us that she rode a dragon to work. Hopefully we don't take her claim at face value. Experience tells us that there is nothing that can give automatic credence to her claim, for there is no evidence readily available to have us believe that she rode a dragon. The standard of evidence, therefore, needs to be higher.

What if 2.3 billion people told you that dragons were real? I think that’s a better example.

This is how I see the claims about god, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Alien Abductions, you name it. It's fine that everyone doesn't have the same standard of evidence for everything, because it's not always necessary to do a full investigation into whether or not little Timmy stole a cookie from the cookie jar. If your standard of evidence for believing in an invisible god is as low as Timmy's theft, then that's your prerogative. I'm saying your standard is low for all things, but that maybe you should reexamine claims as important as belief in an invisible god whose only reference are 2000 year-old books written by people with limited knowledge about the world.

I still think that lumping God in with such finite entities, events, and creatures is a category error. I do not believe in God simply because a book says I should, I believe in God because without this belief and book I cannot make sense of anything else in the world. To me, questioning whether God exists or not is like cutting the very branch you are sitting on.

Special pleading.

How so?

Special pleading still seems to be the best you've got.

How is that special pleading? Are you really suggesting plants can survive only if the light they are receiving comes from the Sun?

Science is fallible, but the point of science is to give us the best approximation given the available evidence. An appeal to science is exactly what the doctor ordered here.

Not if you’re trying to prove another source of information is also fallible, that won’t fly. I’ll give you an example, I have two children, one named Science and one named Scripture (you like what I did there? ). I know that Science is prone to error, I know that not everything he says is true, and in fact I know that he’s changed his story hundreds of times over the years. As for Scripture, well he claims to never tell a lie, and his story has never changed through the years. Using only these two sources of information is it possible for me ever to prove the Scripture is lying based solely on what Science tells me? (For the record I do not have any children and I’d never name them Science and Scripture).

---

Regarded the bolded bit, the speed of light has been measured independently, both within and without Earth's atmosphere, many times - since the late 17th century, and within the margin of error for a particular experiment, the measurements are in agreement.

If you're suggesting that there is enough variability in the speed of light to allow for young earth claims, you're going to have to come up with some mechanism that would allow for the speed of light to increase by many orders of magnitude while staying coherent with all other observations.

Rotsa ruck with that one, GC.

P.S. There's a damn good reason why the speed of light has never been measured in a "true vacuum". Do you know why?

---

You’re overplaying your hand a bit; the one-way speed of light has never been empirically measured, it’s impossible to synchronize the clocks in order to do so.

[Jackalope]

---

Regarded the bolded bit, the speed of light has been measured independently, both within and without Earth's atmosphere, many times - since the late 17th century, and within the margin of error for a particular experiment, the measurements are in agreement.

If you're suggesting that there is enough variability in the speed of light to allow for young earth claims, you're going to have to come up with some mechanism that would allow for the speed of light to increase by many orders of magnitude while staying coherent with all other observations.

Rotsa ruck with that one, GC.

P.S. There's a damn good reason why the speed of light has never been measured in a "true vacuum". Do you know why?

---

You’re overplaying your hand a bit; the one-way speed of light has never been empirically measured, it’s impossible to synchronize the clocks in order to do so.

You have reason to suspect that it's not synchronous? Please, feel free to suggest a testable hypothesis to explain how the speed of light through the same medium is dependent on travel direction.

Please do. We could use a laugh.

[Bad Writer]

…science is self-correcting and has a process of peer-review to ferret out faulty experiments and conclusions. Scripture can neither correct itself nor is there any peer-review process. For this reason, I trust science over any scripture.

So you’re using science to justify your use of science? Nice circularity. Scripture is self-attesting and infallible, science is fallible. Go ahead and take a fallible source over an infallible one, but that just makes you irrational.

So, in your mind, because science can fail sometimes, would that make faith healing better than decades of research into medical science? Can god cure amputees, or should we continue our research into bionic limbs? There are gaping holes in this argument, SW. Just because the Bible says its infallible, does not make this automatically true. Just because thousands of people claim to have been abducted by aliens and can recount their experiences in vivid details, corroborating the stories of everyone else abducted throughout the years, does this make their claims true?

Thirdly, to say we can't use science to dispute scripture is like saying we can't use reality to disprove fantasy. OK, what can I use then, since reality and facts are pesky things that I'm not allowed to use?

You’re using question-begging epithets to try and prove a point, which again makes you irrational. You cannot use a source that we know is fallible to try and prove another source is also fallible, that’s pretty basic reasoning.

No, he’s getting to the source of the issue, and since you’re all but dodging his “question-begging epithets”, that puts you in the awkward chair, not him.

This means that the Andromeda Galaxy is at least 2 million years old.

Nope, it’s impossible to know that, you can stipulate it, but that does not prove anything.

You know what’s interesting? You seem stuck on the idea that science can fail sometimes. This is true, but to a certain point. For instance, since we’re talking about the age of large bodies such as galaxies, do you know how old scientists think our universe is? Before we had the means to truly measure it, the Biblical account was thought to be the correct age, for there was no other explanation beyond that book for a while. And then we found out that earth was older than previously thought, and we learned about how planets were created, how suns were created…all because we observe these things all the time through things called telescopes. We can see the different phases, calculate the time it takes for these things to happen…and in doing so, we could find out other things, like the age of stars, of galaxies, and even the universe itself. 6000 grew to 10000 grew to 100000 and eventually we reached into the millions of years, as new evidence became available. Eventually, we came to the number that we have today: approx. 14 BILLION years for the age of the universe. You see…the age never decreased or fluctuated in its calculations. In fact, as our science and instruments became better and more fine-tuned, so did our understanding of the cosmos. And, to be honest, if we’re STILL wrong about the age of the Universe, it only means that it’s older than 14 billion years, not younger.

So…okay, it’s impossible to truly know, but to go and accept what you seem to believe as fact, that is, the Biblical account, then that would be very irresponsible of us.

The sky is not a dome.

Why not?

---

The absolutely needless redundancy of the sun in this scenario demonstrates an example of the lack of understanding and thought that went into this myth. You're trying to account for the bad writing of people who obviously didn't know what they were talking about.

---

Light can exist without the Sun; tell me you knew that….please.

Of course, as long as there’s a source to shine it. Which light would this be? The light god reflected off his ass cheeks?

…if scripture isn’t inerrant all of reality is rendered unintelligible.

So if the Bible were wrong, we would fall off the earth? Is that the gist of what you’re saying?

Telling me that something is God-breathed (and thank you for defining this term for me) is the same as telling me that Santa Claus called you on the telephone and told you to write down his naughty and nice list, after which you proceeded to propagate this information to everyone. I can't take you on your word because, first, you would need to prove that Santa is real, and, second, I don't care who Santa thinks is naughty or nice. Even if the god of the bible were real, I still would not worship him because I don't like with what people have written about him.

No, this falsely assumes that the existence of God is something that is reasoned to, rather than the foundation for all reason.

So I should believe there’s a Bigfoot just because someone showed me a photo of him and had on hand a plaster mold of his foot? I see TV ads about Messing with Bigfoot all the time…are they trying to tell us something new about ol’ Sasquatch?

Why should I believe anyone when they tell me there’s an invisible, grumpy old man in the sky? Why do you?

…do you apply the same standard that you use to believe in the Bible to Al-Quran or the Bhagavad Gita?

Yes, I actually hold scripture to a higher standard than any of those.

Why do you hold your scripture to a higher standard than the holy books of other nations? That seems a little…odd. If the other two mentioned are at a lower standard, then why don’t you believe in them first before the Bible? Do you even understand what I was asking here?

---

You're right. I was misappropriating my words. Let me take a step back and instead say instead that smart men were making the best approximations at how their world works. Due to discoveries of our days, their assertions look really dumb.

---

Or, smart men of the day were inspired by God to write down His words, and therefore nothing you read in scripture is actually wrong when interpreted in accordance with its literary purpose.

Anything that needs to be interpreted should be held with a high level of scrutiny. How the fuck is this a loving god if he leads his children to him through the most baffling of clues? You would think he’d do a better job of spreading his message. Katy Perry does a better job of getting her message across to the world than god ever could. She is more powerful than He.

---

I would say that sometimes we appeal to special knowledge without realizing that we do so. Any assertion that says that there is an invisible god and the justification for believing such a concept always takes special knowledge, or special pleading. The belief itself is special, as it cannot be proven with demonstrable evidence.

---

Belief in God doesn’t require special knowledge though; billions of people get to that point without knowledge unavailable to anyone else.

And so do Alien Abductees, and believers of Big Foot, and those who have sighted the Loch Ness monster.

Christians believe that God cannot contradict Himself, so if you can provide an actual real straight-up internal logical contradiction (“A” and “Not A” at the same time and in the same sense/relationship) then it would refute Biblical inerrancy. The problem is nobody can provide one because all the examples they give do not fit the definition.

You’ve already shut me down from making any attempts to show you proof to the contrary, since you mentioned a 30-plus page thread that you think failed to do so. I guarantee you that any one of the contradictions presented there were genuine on some level or another, even though you chose to ignore the evidence proferred. I’m going to stay in different territory with you.

Were you raised Mormon?

Yes. Were you raised in a religion?

…I do not feel the Creator of the Universe is in the same category as an invisible dragon or invisible pink unicorn (still trying to figure out how something that is invisible can also be pink ).

It’s pink because I know it’s pink, and you just need more faith in order to fully understand just how pink it is! (Sound familiar?)

---

Jimmy John from the office tells you that he ate a sandwich for lunch. Even though this is entirely plausible, it doesn't make it automatically true. We believe Jimmy though, because our experience tells us that eating a sandwich for lunch is not only possible and probably true, but there's also no reason to disbelieve him, as it doesn't really matter in the end if he ate a sandwich or a burrito. Our standard of evidence is very low, and the evidence is our human experience with hearing claims like this.

---

You believe Jimmy ate a sandwich because there’s no reason to disbelieve him? Well, now that sounds like all claims are assumed to be true until a reason to doubt them is given….no?

I didn’t say all, but it seems that you wish I had.

I’m sure many people see claims that way, which is true about claims concerning god. I’m saying that just about these small time claims that require a lower standard of evidence. If Jimmy tells you he had chips on his lunch break, but then you find out later that he actually ate crackers because you found the empty wrapper on his desk, is it really that big of an issue? So Jimmy was false on his claim, but there was no need to call him out on it. The same cannot be said for bigger claims, such as someone who tells you that he/she can read minds.

---

On the other hand, Susan Simpson tells us that she rode a dragon to work. Hopefully we don't take her claim at face value. Experience tells us that there is nothing that can give automatic credence to her claim, for there is no evidence readily available to have us believe that she rode a dragon. The standard of evidence, therefore, needs to be higher.

---

What if 2.3 billion people told you that dragons were real? I think that’s a better example.

That actually doesn’t change the status of the claim one iota. Whether one person or two hundred or even one billion claims that a dragon is real, the facts always speak for themselves, not majority rule. There is no democracy when it comes to pure, undeniable fact, and the fact is that claiming the existence of dragons when there has been no proof of them in the past still makes the claim an outrageous one, if not a silly one.

Think back to what I said about Alien Abductees. Do you believe they were all abducted by aliens? Why or why not?

---

This is how I see the claims about god, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Alien Abductions, you name it. It's fine that everyone doesn't have the same standard of evidence for everything, because it's not always necessary to do a full investigation into whether or not little Timmy stole a cookie from the cookie jar. If your standard of evidence for believing in an invisible god is as low as Timmy's theft, then that's your prerogative. I'm saying your standard is low for all things, but that maybe you should reexamine claims as important as belief in an invisible god whose only reference are 2000 year-old books written by people with limited knowledge about the world.

---

I still think that lumping God in with such finite entities, events, and creatures is a category error. I do not believe in God simply because a book says I should, I believe in God because without this belief and book I cannot make sense of anything else in the world. To me, questioning whether God exists or not is like cutting the very branch you are sitting on.

It was a rotten branch to begin with. You need to get off the tree entirely.

Are you really suggesting plants can survive only if the light they are receiving comes from the Sun?

Oh, sorry, I forgot that God also made a temporary Greenhouse all over the earth that turned artificial light into something beneficial to all the new little plants he was growing for his fun, fantastic garden in Eden.

How could I possibly know that?! I DON’T because I made it up. Man, it feels good to lie!

Science is fallible, but the point of science is to give us the best approximation given the available evidence. An appeal to science is exactly what the doctor ordered here.

Not if you’re trying to prove another source of information is also fallible, that won’t fly. I’ll give you an example, I have two children, one named Science and one named Scripture (you like what I did there? ). I know that Science is prone to error, I know that not everything he says is true, and in fact I know that he’s changed his story hundreds of times over the years. As for Scripture, well he claims to never tell a lie, and his story has never changed through the years. Using only these two sources of information is it possible for me ever to prove the Scripture is lying based solely on what Science tells me? (For the record I do not have any children and I’d never name them Science and Scripture).

That’s putting on the assumption that Science deliberately lies. Therein lies your problem, no pun intended. (That little guy you named science in that story actually sounds more like the Catholic Church; the science community isn’t out to hide anything, and if you believe they do, then I know a few doctors who can help you overcome your delusions and paranoia.)

[Statler Waldorf]

You have reason to suspect that it's not synchronous? Please, feel free to suggest a testable hypothesis to explain how the speed of light through the same medium is dependent on travel direction.

Please do. We could use a laugh.

A laugh? Why would you laugh? Nothing I said was inaccurate. You seem to be arguing from a Newtonian understanding of synchrony rather than an Einsteinian understanding of it. It’s impossible to demonstrate that it takes millions of years for the light from distant galaxies to reach Earth; you can stipulate that it does, but that proves nothing.

“That light requires the same time to traverse the path A → M as for the path B → M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity” – Einstein, Relativity: The special and general Theory, 1961

So, in your mind, because science can fail sometimes, would that make faith healing better than decades of research into medical science? Can god cure amputees, or should we continue our research into bionic limbs? There are gaping holes in this argument, SW. Just because the Bible says its infallible, does not make this automatically true. Just because thousands of people claim to have been abducted by aliens and can recount their experiences in vivid details, corroborating the stories of everyone else abducted throughout the years, does this make their claims true?

You’re confounding the issue; I am talking about the truth of scripture’s claims, not about giving up modern medicine for faith healing. Scripture doesn’t ever conflict with empirical science, in fact it establishes a foundation for its practice, scripture only conflicts with scientific theories of origins. That’s where I’d rather take the testimony of scripture over those who change their theories and explanations weekly it seems. When someone tells you, “I was wrong every other time in the past, but trust me I am right now!”, should you believe them? I’ll pass.

No, he’s getting to the source of the issue, and since you’re all but dodging his “question-begging epithets”, that puts you in the awkward chair, not him.

No, he was using biased language and trying to use that language to prove his point, it doesn’t.

You know what’s interesting? You seem stuck on the idea that science can fail sometimes. This is true, but to a certain point. For instance, since we’re talking about the age of large bodies such as galaxies, do you know how old scientists think our universe is? Before we had the means to truly measure it, the Biblical account was thought to be the correct age, for there was no other explanation beyond that book for a while. And then we found out that earth was older than previously thought, and we learned about how planets were created, how suns were created…all because we observe these things all the time through things called telescopes. We can see the different phases, calculate the time it takes for these things to happen…and in doing so, we could find out other things, like the age of stars, of galaxies, and even the universe itself. 6000 grew to 10000 grew to 100000 and eventually we reached into the millions of years, as new evidence became available. Eventually, we came to the number that we have today: approx. 14 BILLION years for the age of the universe. You see…the age never decreased or fluctuated in its calculations. In fact, as our science and instruments became better and more fine-tuned, so did our understanding of the cosmos. And, to be honest, if we’re STILL wrong about the age of the Universe, it only means that it’s older than 14 billion years, not younger.

Age is not an empirically measurable property of matter; it’s all based upon assumptions. You just proved my point though, the age they thought it was a century ago, 50 years ago, 25 years ago, ten years ago, and now are all different. Why should I believe someone who changes their story hundreds of times? “I was wrong a century ago, I was wrong 50 years ago, I was wrong 25 years ago, I was wrong 10 years ago, but trust me…I am right now!”

So…okay, it’s impossible to truly know, but to go and accept what you seem to believe as fact, that is, the Biblical account, then that would be very irresponsible of us.

Not at all, you’d be using an infallible source to correct the errors in our fallible source, that seems very rational to me. Non-believers are trying to use a fallible source to correct the infallible source, which is completely backwards.

Of course, as long as there’s a source to shine it. Which light would this be? The light god reflected off his ass cheeks?

No, the light created on day 1, which proves you can have days without the Sun. I love the story of Moses getting mooned by God, it’s a great passage.

So if the Bible were wrong, we would fall off the earth? Is that the gist of what you’re saying?

Well there is a way to argue that yes, but what I was actually saying was that if the Bible were not infallible, it’d be impossible to know anything about reality at all.

So I should believe there’s a Bigfoot just because someone showed me a photo of him and had on hand a plaster mold of his foot? I see TV ads about Messing with Bigfoot all the time…are they trying to tell us something new about ol’ Sasquatch?

Reason and logic can exist independently of Bigfoot, they cannot exist independently of God, so I am not sure where you were going with that example, I do like watching, “Finding Bigfoot” though, good show.

Why should I believe anyone when they tell me there’s an invisible, grumpy old man in the sky? Why do you?

I don’t believe there’s an invisible, grumpy, old man in the sky.

Why do you hold your scripture to a higher standard than the holy books of other nations? That seems a little…odd. If the other two mentioned are at a lower standard, then why don’t you believe in them first before the Bible? Do you even understand what I was asking here?

Because they do not even pass my lower standards, so there’s no reason to apply the more rigorous standard to them; not what you were asking?

Anything that needs to be interpreted should be held with a high level of scrutiny. How the fuck is this a loving god if he leads his children to him through the most baffling of clues? You would think he’d do a better job of spreading his message. Katy Perry does a better job of getting her message across to the world than god ever could. She is more powerful than He.

This falsely assumes that God is desperately trying to save as many people as He can, that’s not taught in the Bible. I really doubt there are 2.3 Billion Katy Perry fans in the World though.

And so do Alien Abductees, and believers of Big Foot, and those who have sighted the Loch Ness monster.

Billions of people have been abducted by aliens? That seems a bit…high.

You’ve already shut me down from making any attempts to show you proof to the contrary, since you mentioned a 30-plus page thread that you think failed to do so. I guarantee you that any one of the contradictions presented there were genuine on some level or another, even though you chose to ignore the evidence proferred. I’m going to stay in different territory with you.

I didn’t shut you down (I respect your opinion too much to do that), you could always provide an example not given in that thread, but something is either a logical contradiction or it’s not, so it is impossible for them to only be “genuine on some level.” They’re also impossible to refute, and yet three of us theists refuted every single one of them rather easily.

Yes. Were you raised in a religion?

My best friend during school is a Mormon; they’re tough to discuss things with. I was raised Christian, but became a Reformed Christian about 5 years ago.

It’s pink because I know it’s pink, and you just need more faith in order to fully understand just how pink it is! (Sound familiar?)

Not really, but still clever.

I didn’t say all, but it seems that you wish I had.

Well why not all? What’s the criteria?

I’m sure many people see claims that way, which is true about claims concerning god. I’m saying that just about these small time claims that require a lower standard of evidence. If Jimmy tells you he had chips on his lunch break, but then you find out later that he actually ate crackers because you found the empty wrapper on his desk, is it really that big of an issue? So Jimmy was false on his claim, but there was no need to call him out on it. The same cannot be said for bigger claims, such as someone who tells you that he/she can read minds.

Ok, I am following you so far, but how do you determine whether a claim requires a higher or lower standard? Surely it cannot be determined by people, since truth is independent of us.

That actually doesn’t change the status of the claim one iota. Whether one person or two hundred or even one billion claims that a dragon is real, the facts always speak for themselves, not majority rule. There is no democracy when it comes to pure, undeniable fact, and the fact is that claiming the existence of dragons when there has been no proof of them in the past still makes the claim an outrageous one, if not a silly one.

Yes, I am aware that truth is not determined by majority, but are you really suggesting you do not believe in anything that you’ve never personally seen?

Think back to what I said about Alien Abductees. Do you believe they were all abducted by aliens? Why or why not?

No, I think it’s a supernatural experience, but not one with aliens. However, if 2.3 billion people all claimed to have been abducted, I think you’d join me in thinking something remarkable was going on, no?

It was a rotten branch to begin with. You need to get off the tree entirely.

We’re all standing on that same branch, and it’s what keeps us from dying a horrible death, and you keep trying to saw it off. Stop it!

Oh, sorry, I forgot that God also made a temporary Greenhouse all over the earth that turned artificial light into something beneficial to all the new little plants he was growing for his fun, fantastic garden in Eden.

If the light is in the right spectrum, plants don’t care where it came from.

How could I possibly know that?! I DON’T because I made it up. Man, it feels good to lie!

You didn’t make it up though; Genesis 1 clearly says there was light on day 1, prior to the creation of plants.

That’s putting on the assumption that Science deliberately lies. Therein lies your problem, no pun intended. (That little guy you named science in that story actually sounds more like the Catholic Church; the science community isn’t out to hide anything, and if you believe they do, then I know a few doctors who can help you overcome your delusions and paranoia.)

I never said he intentionally lies, and it doesn’t matter either way, if there’s a possibility he’s wrong (even by accident), and we know there is a very high possibility he is, then he cannot be used to prove my boy Scripture is capable of making mistakes too. Right?

[Jackalope]

You have reason to suspect that it's not synchronous? Please, feel free to suggest a testable hypothesis to explain how the speed of light through the same medium is dependent on travel direction.

Please do. We could use a laugh.

A laugh? Why would you laugh? Nothing I said was inaccurate. You seem to be arguing from a Newtonian understanding of synchrony rather than an Einsteinian understanding of it. It’s impossible to demonstrate that it takes millions of years for the light from distant galaxies to reach Earth; you can stipulate that it does, but that proves nothing.

“That light requires the same time to traverse the path A → M as for the path B → M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity” – Einstein, Relativity: The special and general Theory, 1961

I'm fully aware of the nature of the problem you raise, Statler. I'm also aware that Einstein is taking about paths A → M and B → M while I'm referring to A → B and B → A. I fully recognize the futility in attempting to measure any such difference between the two.

What's funny here is not that there might possibly be a difference, but that some propose that there is a difference without providing any sort of explanation as to how it might be so.

Perhaps on one leg of the journey little green men got out and pushed, perhaps?

[Statler Waldorf]

I'm fully aware of the nature of the problem you raise, Statler. I'm also aware that Einstein is taking about paths A → M and B → M while I'm referring to A → B and B → A. I fully recognize the futility in attempting to measure any such difference between the two.

What's funny here is not that there might possibly be a difference, but that some propose that there is a difference without providing any sort of explanation as to how it might be so.

Perhaps on one leg of the journey little green men got out and pushed, perhaps?

Suggesting that light travels at the same speed from A to B as it does from B to A in relation to the observer A’s velocity is a stipulation, it’s a matter of convention and therefore proves nothing concerning how light really does travel. If we want to make the speed of light dependent upon position rather than velocity we are certainly free to do so, and therefore light from distant stars reaches Earth instantaneously under that convention. The point is that you cannot argue by appealing to mere convention.

[Jackalope]

Suggesting that light travels at the same speed from A to B as it does from B to A in relation to the observer A’s velocity is a stipulation, it’s a matter of convention and therefore proves nothing concerning how light really does travel. If we want to make the speed of light dependent upon position rather than velocity we are certainly free to do so, and therefore light from distant stars reaches Earth instantaneously under that convention. The point is that you cannot argue by appealing to mere convention.

No kidding, really? I really was not aware of that, Statler. /sarcasm

The point that is eluding you is this - I am not the one that is proposing that light behaves differently traveling from point A to B than it does from point B to A (or under any other circumstance, for that matter).

I'm proposing that it lacks the appearance that it does so, and that there is no known mechanism by which it could do so, and it seems humorous to me to suggest that it does do so.

Might, yeah. Then again, monkeys might fly out of my butt, too.