Christians. Could you be wrong?

[FatAndFaithless]

A preliminary question: How is an absence of information considered the same as a contradiction?

The contradiction is that the bible's flood story is just flat out wrong.

Not just wrong, demonstrably false. It's a load of tosh.

It's been too long since I've heard someone describe bullshit as "tosh". Classy~

[Fidel_Castronaut]

That's just how I role

[JesusHChrist]

So Mr. Undeceived,

My atheist band mates have you shown you why your bible, at the least, cannot be taken literally -- too many errors and problems.

No Adam and Eve - we know this from genetics
No global flood - it's SO cute why believers trot this one out. Sad, but cute.
No Exodus - no evidence for Moses, Egyptian captivity et al. All post hoc nationalistic bullshit, I mean tosh.
Failed prophecies - Tyre rocks baby!

That's sufficient to show the book is the work of man, not some fancy-pants sadomasochistic, sociopath sky monster.

So, how is this thing the Werd of Gawd again? Much more likely it's the Werd of the Jewish patriarchy.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Did you know that the ancient Chinese symbol for 'boat' is composed of the characters “vessel” “eight” and “people”?

http://creation.com/cmi-misrepresents-an...e-language

Can you cite this from a Chinese linguist and not a creationist website?

Because the latter has absolutely no credibility in matters of linguistics.

[Mister Agenda]

Yes, but they could be an agnostic Christian: admit that they don't know but they believe in Christianity anyway.

I'm not sure it's possible to be an agnostic xtian. Agnostic theist, yes; but a xtian is deemed to have all that revelation crap, so they are meant to know in the true gnostic sense.

You don't have to irrationally claim you know something is true in order to believe that it's true. That stance doesn't necessarily only apply to the question of God's existence.

[Libertine]

As an atheist I am willing to admit that I could be wrong. God may exist. Your Bible may be 100% accurate. All I need is evidence.

Is there anything that could convince you that the God of the Bible may not exist?

The real question is what are the consequences for a Christian being wrong VS an Atheist.

If a Christian is wrong there are no consequences, in fact he\she will never realize it. If an Atheist is wrong then he\she has eternal separation to look forward to...Even if they are right, the future is still pretty bleak.

I hope you picked the right GOD!!

Atheism is just a lose/lose situation.

A Christian is under no obligation to try and convince anyone or provide proof. Their only obligation is the seek out the lost sheep.

John 10:26
But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep


A person is born as either a sheep or a goat. A sheep needs no convincing they just need the opportunity to hear the truth and they will believe it, its just that simple. The goat is the stubborn one, always wanting to butt it's head up against something, and no matter how hard you try you can't turn a goat into a sheep..Not gonna happen.

Personally speaking, I've seen plenty of evidence, there isn't a question in my mind on if what I believe is true. The problem is, faith is required to produce the evidence, which is why Paul stated that the gospel came not in word form only, but also in power and demonstration. You just need the prerequisite of faith to make it work.

Also as a side note, faith has nothing to do with religion, anyone is capable of having faith, as documented by the "placebo effect".

So you believe because you’re afraid to die?? You are just using GOD for personal gain; you should be ashamed of yourself after all he has done for you. I bet you would marry for money too. They have a word for that I think.

[Mister Agenda]

A preliminary question: How is an absence of information considered the same as a contradiction?{/quote]

It would only be a contradiction if there should be information where you're looking. For example, if you claimed the moon was split in two last night, and we can find no evidence of it, that's a contradiction, because if the moon split in two last night, there should certainly be evidence of it.

[quote='Undeceived' pid='730748' dateline='1408093484']
Yet there are plenty of flood stories, from various civilizations, as you can easily find on wikipedia.

Some cultures have local flood stories, some have global flood stories, and some don't have any. It doesn't take a global flood to explain the origin of the stories, a local one will do, or observing fossil seashells on mountain tops could reasonably cause one to speculate that the ocean was once as high as the mountaintops. Primitive people can be excused for not understanding the problems with that or that the real explanation is that the mountaintops were once so low.

I can't think of an example of a tribe localized to to volcanic mountains that has a global flood story.

Did you know that the ancient Chinese symbol for 'boat' is composed of the characters “vessel” “eight” and “people”?

I've heard that. My family is mostly Pentecostal. I've never heard it from anyone I would consider an expert on Chinese.

I'm curious: are you not going to address Esquilax's point about the verse in Isaiah that refers to the 'circle of the earth' not being evidence that the writer was aware the earth is closer in shape to a ball than a disk?

---

Hm. The characters Undeceived refers to are modern, simplified Hanzi characters. I wonder why they didn't use the ancient characters? Why use characters that have had centuries to be modified since Christians made contact with China when there are characters thousands of years old scratched on ancient artifacts?

And of course there's the problem of pareidolia...with tens of thousands of characters to consider, if you go looking for patterns, there will be a large number of them, purely by chance.

I've seen people do the same thing with English, with the claim that the English word 'good' is based on the word 'God'. It isn't, despite the spelling difference only being one letter. It actually derives from a Protogermanic world (something like gothez) that means roughly the same thing as 'good' does now. 'God' comes from the Protogermanic word 'guthan' ('to invoke', or maybe 'to pour').

It's easy to mistake similarities for actual connections when you only have a superficial understanding of the subject. I completely bought the 'good' comes from 'God' meme for years, until I finally bothered to research it.

[Undeceived]

No Adam and Eve - we know this from genetics

In what way? Isn't the "mitochondrial eve" generally accepted among secular scientists? Even evolutionists agree that all genes trace back to one man/woman.

[JesusHChrist]

No Adam and Eve - we know this from genetics

In what way? Isn't the "mitochondrial eve" generally accepted among secular scientists? Even evolutionists agree that all genes trace back to one man/woman.

Yes, but that man/woman never met. They are from two different genetic lines, in two different geographies, hundreds of miles apart. Probably millenia apart as well.

And also note, mitochondrial eve was not the only human female alive at the time. Her genetic line is merely the only one that survived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Mitochondrial Eve is named after mitochondria and the biblical Eve.[2] Unlike her biblical namesake, she was not the only living human female of her time. However, her female contemporaries, except her mother, failed to produce a direct unbroken female line to any living woman in the present day.

Mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived between 99,000 and 200,000 years ago,[3][4][5] most likely in East Africa,[6] when Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans) were developing as a population distinct from other human sub-species.

Mitochondrial Eve lived later than Homo heidelbergensis and the emergence of Homo neanderthalensis, but earlier than the out of Africa migration.[7] The dating for "Eve" was a blow to the multiregional hypothesis and a boost to the theory of the origin and dispersion of modern humans from Africa, replacing more "archaic" human populations such as Neanderthals. As a result, a consensus emerged among anthropologists that the latter theory was more plausible.

Analogous to the Mitochondrial Eve is the Y-chromosomal Adam, the member of Homo sapiens sapiens from whom all living humans are descended patrilineally. The inherited DNA in the male case is his nuclear Y chromosome rather than the mtDNA. Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam need not have lived at the same time.[8] For example, Y-chromosomal Adam has been estimated to have lived during a wide range of times from 180,000 to 581,000 years ago,[9][10][11] while a 2013 paper concluded that he lived between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago[5][12] (however, this paper did not include some Cameroonians and one African American, who did not inherit their Y from that "Adam"[10]).

[Undeceived]

Hm. The characters Undeceived refers to are modern, simplified Hanzi characters. I wonder why they didn't use the ancient characters? Why use characters that have had centuries to be modified since Christians made contact with China when there are characters thousands of years old scratched on ancient artifacts?

The characters are ancient.
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j19_2...96-108.pdf