Best description of Christianity

[robvalue]

We really need to shake this notion that animals are just a cat or a dog and it's that simple. As usual, religion tries to reduce extremely complex ideas to tiny, discrete, simple ones so it can pile them up and knock them over.

And I need to get a t-shirt saying "evolution wrong =/= goddidit".

People don't seem to get that. False dichotomy. Bleh.

[Thumpalumpacus]

We really need to shake this notion that animals are just a cat or a dog and it's that simple. As usual, religion tries to reduce extremely complex ideas to tiny, discrete, simple ones so it can pile them up and knock them over.

And I need to get a t-shirt saying "evolution wrong =/= goddidit".

People don't seem to get that. False dichotomy. Bleh.

An untoward admiration for absolutes it the hallmark of a simple mind, no matter the topic at hand.

[DeistPaladin]

We really need to shake this notion that animals are just a cat or a dog and it's that simple. As usual, religion tries to reduce extremely complex ideas to tiny, discrete, simple ones so it can pile them up and knock them over.

And I need to get a t-shirt saying "evolution wrong =/= goddidit".

People don't seem to get that. False dichotomy. Bleh.

False and strict dichotomies seem to be hard wired into their oversimplified worldview. How often do we run into this with apologists? Let me try to do a quick rundown of all the examples that immediately leap to mind:

1. Pascal's Wager
2. C.S. Lewis' Trilemma (OK, that's a false trichotomy but same principle)
3. "Either (our) God dictates morals or anything goes"
4. "Either Jesus existed or someone just made him up one day"
5. "Either Christianity is true or life has no meaning"
6. Presuppositionalism (the mother-load of false dichotomies and other fallacies)
...and let's not forget the unspoken false dilemma implicit in nearly all their arguments for (their) god:
7. "Either our god exists or no god exists."

Apologetics, by design, is made to appeal to those seeking simple answers with minimal thinking. Additionally, false dilemmas are rather hardwired into Christian (as well as Islamic) worldviews. Jesus-or-Satan. Heaven-or-Hell. Saved-or-lost. There is no "Bob the Neutral Christ".

As Monte Python's Spanish Inquisition put it, "there is no third thing, is that clear?"

[Huggy Bear]

Also - scientists are educated and in agreement regarding evolution - when they come up with another alternative explanation for the origin of species, or even the presence of "aliens" - I'll consider it. UFO-proponents are... errr... less educated (at best) and tell incoherent and contradicting stories, so I don't see why I should treat them with the same seriousness - unless they have ACTUAL (and pretty extraordinary, considering the claims) EVIDENCE. Which they don't.

(*emboldened by me)

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

The first sightings occurred in November 1944, when pilots flying over Germany by night reported seeing fast-moving round glowing objects following their aircraft. The objects were variously described as fiery, and glowing red, white, or orange. Some pilots described them as resembling Christmas tree lights and reported that they seemed to toy with the aircraft, making wild turns before simply vanishing. Pilots and aircrew reported that the objects flew formation with their aircraft and behaved as if under intelligent control, but never displayed hostile behavior. However, they could not be outmaneuvered or shot down. The phenomenon was so widespread that the lights earned a name – in the European Theater of Operations they were often called "kraut fireballs" but for the most part called "foo-fighters". The military took the sightings seriously, suspecting that the mysterious sightings might be secret German weapons, but further investigation revealed that German and Japanese pilots had reported similar sightings

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

Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, Jr. (March 6, 1927 – October 4, 2004), (Col, USAF), better known as Gordon Cooper, was an American aerospace engineer, test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, and one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned space program of the United States.

Cooper claimed to have seen his first UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951, although he denied reports he had seen a UFO during his Mercury flight

He held claim until his death that the U.S. government is indeed covering up information about UFOs. He gave the example of President Harry Truman who said on April 4, 1950, "I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth." He also pointed out that there were hundreds of reports made by his fellow pilots, many coming from military jet pilots sent to respond to radar or visual sightings from the ground.[12] In his memoirs, Cooper wrote he had seen other unexplained aircraft several times during his career, and also said hundreds of similar reports had been made. He further claimed these sightings had been "swept under the rug" by the U.S. government.[7] Throughout his later life Cooper expressed repeatedly in interviews he had seen UFOs and described his recollections for the documentary Out of the Blue.

[Esquilax]

We really need to shake this notion that animals are just a cat or a dog and it's that simple. As usual, religion tries to reduce extremely complex ideas to tiny, discrete, simple ones so it can pile them up and knock them over.

Also, "species" is not some magic barrier, or some pillar of natural order that it's impossible to cross. Whenever creationists argue against evolution they seem to speak as though it's laughable on the face of it to even consider that one species could change into another, like that's obviously impossible just on the face of it. But the word species is just a taxonomic classification that we made up, it's a word, with a use, but it's still just a word with a definition in a human language. The line of demarcation between one species and another is similarly just a made up construct designed to help us order the natural world.

Despite the language, one species evolving into another is really just one category we made up, transferring into another category we made up. That shit happens all the time.

[Huggy Bear]

First of all, Evolution has never been put to the scientific test seeing how the first step in the scientific method is observation, please point out the article, where anyone has observed one specie of animal evolving into a completely different specie.

Hey, I have an idea! How about before you speak on a subject, you know what you're talking about first? Wouldn't that be crazy?

Meet the Gray Tree Frog, and the Cope's Gray Tree Frog. They are different species, with different cellular makeup, that cannot interbreed; this species divergence happened over a short time, potentially even a single generation, via a process called autopolyploidy. One of the two species existed beforehand, and after breeding there was a completely separate species, assuming we're using the common scientific definition of a species.

So, you're wrong, unless you want to wriggle out by using some arcane other definition of species, which I don't think is terribly far from your normal course of argumentation. But then we'd be wondering why we should use your self serving definition over the normal one.

Now, speciation events of this type are rare, but they do happen. More normally, species diverge over concurrent generations through a process of small alterations, and this has also been observed to occur, but even if it hadn't your point would make no sense, as those genetic mutations that drive evolution have been observed under laboratory conditions; by making the stand that you are, you are asserting that small changes can occur, but that those small changes can never accumulate, for some reason. But we've never observed any mechanism that prevents those changes from accumulating across the (human defined, I might add. It's not like this is some magic transcending of a natural order) species boundaries we use, so the conditions of your own argument prevent you from making it.

Your argument is self refuting, and your ignorance of the process of evolution does not bode well for your insistence on talking about it.

I'm Glad you had to jump in and open you mouth, I clearly stated

You do realize that one species of animal has never been observed to evolve into a completely different species

and by species, I mean from one animal into another, I consider frogs to belong to the same group. I suppose you forgot that I stated a while back that an animal can evolve from it's group, but a cat cant evolve into a dog. Dogs evolve from Dogs. In that sense I don't consider the frogs to be different species.

I suppose I'd better include the quote or I'd be accused of "moving the goal posts"
http://atheistforums.org/thread-24368-po...#pid618632

this requires a much longer explanation than I feel like giving, but I will say this. I believe in evolution. It would be ridiculous to think that Noah took two of every animal on the ark. The bible says he took 2 of each sort, meaning group, or animal family and what what we have today is a product of evolution.

Ok, so let's examine "speciation" since you brought it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. The biologist Orator F. Cook was the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or "cladogenesis," as opposed to "anagenesis" or "phyletic evolution" occurring within lineages.[1][2][3] Whether genetic drift is a minor or major contributor to speciation is the subject matter of much ongoing discussion.

There are four geographic modes of speciation in nature, based on the extent to which speciating populations are isolated from one another: allopatric, peripatric, parapatric, and sympatric. Speciation may also be induced artificially, through animal husbandry, agriculture, or laboratory experiments.

So we see that speciation can induced artificially through animal husbandry.

As you well know, slavery was a part of Americas history where they bred people like animals in order to pass on "favorable traits", do you consider African-Americans to be a different species of human?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

"But they're both still frogs!" in 3... 2... 1...

Called it.

[robvalue]

How much do I owe you Parker?

[Natachan]

"and by species, I mean from one animal into another, "

Someone is moving their goal posts. I love seeing these new flying goal posts, can I buy them at Academy?

[Huggy Bear]

"But they're both still frogs!" in 3... 2... 1...

Called it.

considering that has always been my stance (I even posted the link to prove it) It wasn't much of a "call", but you're more than welcome to answer the last question I asked.