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Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

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This new 'catch-all' thread will operate similar to the Creationism and Protestant/Catholic Debate threads.

Too many threads are spoilt and dragged off topic when a non-Christian poster demands, "What evidence do you have for God?" While some may enjoy such discussion, it is frequently off-topic and derails discussion of other subjects (the very discussion that is the reason for this Forum's existence).

So, in order to protect the Forum and facilitate on topic discussions, all that stuff now belongs here. Anyone who keeps trying to derail other discussions by demanding evidence for God's existence will be warned, and if those warnings are ignored then swift infractions and bans will ensue.

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nozzferrahhtoo

Thisname wrote: »

Highly unlikely that a group of people, would be experiencing the same delusion about Jesus.

Why not? Gullible people get convinced by things all the time. Gullible people get convinced by other gullible people. We see it all the time, from cargo cults, to alien abductions, to other religions, to homeopathy, to much more. Shared delusion is quite common.

Look at the shared delusions of Sathya Sai Baba for a prime example. I trust you are not compelled by the fabricated and perpetuated claims of him having magical powers..... despite 100s of contemporaneous eye witness accounts.......... from walking on water to flying without the aid of technology..... being born of a virgin and turning non-alcoholic beverages into wine.

Thisname wrote: »

I'm simply pointing out that no one would actively spread a fabricated story, something they say they witnessed personally, knowing it would invite persecution on themselves. They had nothing to gain by making up such a story. It doesn't make sense.

There are many angles from which it would make sense actually. And we see examples of each angle all the time.

For example while a story is fabricated, someone perpetuating it might actually genuinely believe it themselves.

A second is that it might actually bring them some benefit to perpetuate a fabricated story. You merely declaring they would have nothing to gain, does not mean it is so. There are many ways people can gain from perpetuating fabrications.

A third is they might simply be delusional or have other mental issues.

The list goes on, these are but three examples. Suffice to say however that merely declaring there is no reason why a fabricated story might be perpetuated is entirely false.

Thisname wrote: »

Also, I think the conversion of Paul is pretty compelling, how he made a complete 180 after his encounter with Jesus.

I never find the conversion of other people, on any idea, to be compelling. I find the substance of their conversion compelling, and no such substance is being offered here except an incidental claim that a conversion occurred.

"I did not believe it before but now I do" or "This person did not believe it before and is now convinced" say precisely and exactly _nothing_ to me. Literally nothing at all.

"X did not believe it before, now does, and here are the arguments, evidence, data or reasoning that convinced him..........". Now THAT would be compelling.

Thisname wrote: »

If you truly believe that in your heart and put your trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, you will receive the free gift of eternal life.

Given this thread is not about giving sermons on Christian ideas, but on the substantiation of them, I am compelled to ask how you are substantiating ANY of the above at all.

The above contains wild claims such as the existence of a god, that human consciousness and subjectivity survives the death of the brain, and that a non-human intelligence walked this earth in human form.

Can you substantiate a SINGLE one of these claims in even the smallest way? Or are we to expect only sermons?

Thisname wrote: »

You've got to ask, why on earth would the writers of the New Testament make up their accounts of Jesus? Think about it..putting their lives on the line, suffering immense persecution, some to the point of martyrdom...sounds like a great idea!

I can think of multiple reasons, from madness, to attention seeking, to desperation to carve out a career, to being compelled by unseen influences to do so, to genuinely believing it themselves for no reason, to much much more.

Sorry to say but if you simply can not think of any possible explanations for this, it is merely for want of meaningful application of imagination, or a lack of such a faculty. Possible explanations abound if one is merely being asked to come up with some.

Groups of people get together and perpetuate fabricated nonsense all the time, even in the face of derision and worse. Look at this video here for an example of not just fabrication, but the systematic complicit nature of a long and indepth process of self-deception and mutual-deception. To the point this poor old man attempted to bring his magical powers into a REAL ring with a REAL fighter and god his nose thumped bloody multiple times before the referee mercifully saved him by ending the match up.

And yet you sit there and marvel that deception, self deception, and layers of mutual deception might compel people to espouse and perpetuate falsehoods in the face of risks and derision and worse. I simply do not share your surprise as I have observed too much of the real world to marvel at the mundane any more.

orubiru

Festus wrote: »

Let me put the Bible in a nutshell for you.

Have faith in Christ and follow Him, and you can have eternal life.

If you do not you are assured of eternal death.

This is what God, through the Bible, promises.

Will you take my word on that?

This is nonsense though. Seriously, what kind of God behaves in this way?

It's OK for folks born here in Ireland where Christianity is still quite prominent. You can be raised by a Catholic family and so Faith in Christ is easy to attain and easy to re-affirm over the course of your life.

What if a kid is raised by parents who don't teach them about Christ? Or tell them that Christ doesn't exist? Or encourage them to worship Thor or Zeus or some other God?

That child is denied eternal life and condemned to eternal death? That seems rather unfair, no?

Only around 1/3 of the worlds population are Christian. A smaller number than that would have Faith in Christ. Doesn't God know that 66% of us are at risk?

In effect, God is saying that eternal life is an exclusive club that most will gain access to by virtue of having been born in the right place at the right time. For others they will have to do some work to get there.

For the rest of the world? Well, it's eternal death for those guys. Should have been brought up in a Christian society, dummies.

Should God not be held accountable here? 2,000 years ago it would have been EASY to believe in Jesus, EASY to have Faith in Jesus. Simply because you could head out and meet the guy. You could be there when he performs miracles. You could talk to him and learn from him. 2,000 years later? We are depending on books written by guys who knew Jesus or who were there when Jesus was doing his thing.

Faith in Christ is ACTUALLY just Faith in the people who wrote about Christ.

As time moves on it becomes more and more difficult for people to have Faith. God would surely understand this? Surely, God would know that revealing himself in a very localized part of the world for one time only kind of screws over people who would have had Faith in Christ if only He had shown up every 200 years or so?

I mean, God would have known the Internet was coming right? So why not hold off on revealing Jesus for a few more years and then sending him to Earth when he could make the maximum positive impact on Humanity?

Could you imagine Jesus showing up on the eve of WW1 and telling us to stop? Brilliant! What a force for Good! What a guy!

Nope, some back water town, almost two thousand years before mass communication is really possible. But, hey, if you don't have Faith, then it's eternal death for you.

Seriously, you folks need to question your God and his motivations because all I see is the image of some cruel trickster laughing his ass off at us while we struggle and die.

kingchess

I wonder what the Bible has to say about life on other planets,for example,Mars?.

RikuoAmero

orubiru wrote: »

faith in Christ is ACTUALLY just Faith in the people who wrote about Christ.

That's it in a nutshell. I've been told by certain people over and over again, that the bible is trustworthy, that the records contained within are eyewitness accounts...and yet, whenever I examine these claims, they always fall short. To which I'm told "You have to accept them, or Bad Things Happen".
No. The bible was written by humans, and as such, is subject to the same criteria we subject ALL other historical documents to. When I read Greek myths about Heracles, I don't have faith that he really was the son of Zeus and ascended to Mt. Olympus, or Bad Things Happen. I examine the claim.
When I read accounts of Caesar, I separate the various claims into two categories
1) Natural claims
2) Supernatural claims
Something falling into the first set would be something along the lines of "Caesar invaded this country and conquered it", while something in the second would obviously be something like "Caesar was a god in human form". I can easily accept claims from the first set since things like invasions and conquests are quite common. They are ordinary claims to make, they've happened thousands of times throughout history. If the claim about a particular individual conquering a country turns out to actually be false, it doesn't change my life in any way. I just say "Ok, my mistake, let's update the history textbooks to incorporate this new evidence"
Something like a god in human form is an extraordinary claim to make, and hence requires more evidence than what we would accept for a conquest claim. If a certain individual really is a god in human form, then it would change my life. It would have a huge impact. (For example, if islam is true, I have to pray FIVE times a day, and somehow try to do it facing towards Mecca. If christianity is true, I have to go to church on Sunday) To guard against me changing my life needlessly over god claims that turn out to be false, I demand better evidence than what I'm being given.
So far, in this thread, I've been presented with a 2,000 year old volume that was written by fallible humans. I've been told to do the research myself (completely ignoring the many times I've pointed out that I in fact already have), I've been told to believe OR ELSE!, I've been told blatantly unsubstantiated claims (like the gospels were eyewitness accounts).
None of that is good enough. Other religions and other claims throughout history have all presented the exact same level and quality of evidence yet if I were to accept the christian position, that would be me committing the logical fallacy of special pleading (where I accept the low level of evidence for one particular religion, yet don't accept it for all other religions)

Harika

kingchess wrote: »

I wonder what the Bible has to say about life on other planets,for example,Mars?.

We haven't found life on other planets yet, but that does not stop some nut cases to demand a stop for that search as aliens don't descend from Adam and so cannot enter heaven. http://www.christianpost.com/news/ken-ham-slams-nasa-search-for-extraterrestrial-life-says-god-did-not-create-life-outside-earth-123660/

Of course this is only the opinion of one guy, others are there more open and already claim that this life was predicted in the bible, so the prophecy comes true. While others state there are no records for aliens in the bible. So at the end, whatever happens, the bible is right, it was just no read correctly.

ABC101

Gintonious wrote: »

But if you refuse this, its eternal hell for you. A punishment that only shows its face in the New Testament, no mention at all in the old as horrible as it already is with slavery, genocide and murder.

This promise is nothing more than a poison chalice.

And this is where I have issue with the bible. It is full of some really evil and terrifying things, yet when a non-believer mentions them, we are told "oh, those aren't meant to be taken literally", but is it or is it not the word of god? This claim of higher understanding of the book to show it as a force for good is nothing more than a red herring.

This literal taking of the bible is something of a concern in this day and age, we aren't banging rock together to start a fire, yet there are people who take this stuff as literal, and claim that it still has relevance in society, when all it does is still show we haven't evolved enough yet.

Why would anyone take your word for it, when it is based on a book with so many loopholes, immoral teaching and no eye witness accounts?

Ahh... Gintonious... I think you have it a bit mixed up there...

Firstly murder, genocide, rape, brutality etc etc have been around since the dawn of man, and even though the Bilbe was written many years ago... these injustices are still occuring today.

Yesterday over 140 people in a school in Pakistan were murdered... is that because of the Bible? If you are to ignore the Bible because of human brutality... you may as well get rid of your TV, because that contains / reports appalling injustices every hour, history books, internet all contain descriptions of various injustices.

It's just part of human nature and while humans can carry out great works, there is a lot of examples of evil works.

Your point about "poisioned Chalice". Of the various visionaries / holy people who have visited Hell... they speak of the most painful part of Hell. This is the complete absense of God. Once in Hell, the greatest torment is being totally cut off from God. Due to the soul having been made by God, it has a special affinity to return to God, or a desire to do so. However once in Hell, there is a complete and utter absense of God.

There are other nasty torments in Hell too, but that is not the point in Christianity. Christianity is about the person devloping a closer more loving relationship with God, through Jesus Christ and the various teachings in the new Testament. If you think about the 10 commandments (old Testament), if everybody in the world obeyed these rules, there would be a huge reduction in rape, murder, theft etc etc.

With respect to reading the Bible.... there are a few ground rules which are helpful to know...

1) Do not think you are the 1st to understand God's message in the Bible and that there are no true Christians before you. Otherwise you could end up down the path of setting up your own sect / religion.

2) The word of God is life giving, but that does not mean that every word is an instant problem solver today. Each word was given by God to people living under hard circumstances. One has to think / attempt to understand what their problem was.... and what God wanted them to understand. Then you can ask... What light does this message shed on the present time and circumstances?

3) God taught his people from Abraham to the Apostles, but he did not teach them everything from the beginning. This is why there is a difference in teaching between Moses + Prophets and the Apostles. There is a difference between Old and New Testaments etc.

4) From the very first message God gave his people, he had in mind the coming of Jesus (with the mystery of Cross and Resurrection). Numerous prophets mention this... prepare a way for the Lord etc. It is important to under stand this link between New and Old Testaments.

5) In the Bible... what is most important... is clearly taught. However be aware ... some pages that actually have very little to teach us were written in a sophisticated way according to an old literary style. In other words... don't get HUNG UP on some strange sentences to the point of forsaking what is clear and fundamental.

6) The Bible as a spiritual book should be read regularly by Christians as proof and faithfullness to God. Do not try and learn what you do not yet know, you have to see it in a bigger picture. God allows various insights to come to people who love him, helping their understanding.

7) The old Testament, contains many important lessons, but on having read the New Testament, one's understanding of the Old Testament changes.

8) Do not attempt to open the Bible and on your first page take a literal reading of your predicament. While God can communicate with people this way....God is under no commitment to do so.

robinph

ABC101 wrote: »

Gintonious wrote: »

But if you refuse this, its eternal hell for you. A punishment that only shows its face in the New Testament, no mention at all in the old as horrible as it already is with slavery, genocide and murder.

This promise is nothing more than a poison chalice.

And this is where I have issue with the bible. It is full of some really evil and terrifying things, yet when a non-believer mentions them, we are told "oh, those aren't meant to be taken literally", but is it or is it not the word of god? This claim of higher understanding of the book to show it as a force for good is nothing more than a red herring.

This literal taking of the bible is something of a concern in this day and age, we aren't banging rock together to start a fire, yet there are people who take this stuff as literal, and claim that it still has relevance in society, when all it does is still show we haven't evolved enough yet.

Why would anyone take your word for it, when it is based on a book with so many loopholes, immoral teaching and no eye witness accounts?

Ahh... Gintonious... I think you have it a bit mixed up there...

...

5) In the Bible... what is most important... is clearly taught. However be aware ... some pages that actually have very little to teach us were written in a sophisticated way according to an old literary style. In other words... don't get HUNG UP on some strange sentences to the point of forsaking what is clear and fundamental.

6) The Bible as a spiritual book should be read regularly by Christians as proof and faithfullness to God. Do not try and learn what you do not yet know, you have to see it in a bigger picture. God allows various insights to come to people who love him, helping their understanding.

7) The old Testament, contains many important lessons, but on having read the New Testament, one's understanding of the Old Testament changes.

8) Do not attempt to open the Bible and on your first page take a literal reading of your predicament. While God can communicate with people this way....God is under no commitment to do so.

TL/DR - "oh, those aren't meant to be taken literally"

Looks to me as if Gintonious had it spot on.

Frank Bullitt

Ahh... Gintonious... I think you have it a bit mixed up there...

And here we go, the very first line of your response, the place all the faithful resort to "well I know this because I know the bible better etc...". This really gets to me as it is a very high position of pig ignorance, what exactly gives you a better understanding of the stuff in the bible over me? Me, raised as a Catholic, went to a C.B.S, baptized, communion, confirmation and attending mass, hearing priests every Sunday waffle on and on.

Even a glance through the bible shows some rather sinister events that if they were to happen today, the U.N would get involved.

Yet to try and stand up for this wicked evil. Have you no shame?

Do not attempt to open the Bible and on your first page take a literal reading of your predicament. While God can communicate with people this way....God is under no commitment to do so.

What an incredibly ignorant and crude statement to make. So this book, which is the word of god, takes multiple readings to fully understand it teachings? Are you sure that you just mean to re-read it over and over to get through the rubbish that is taught in it?

Firstly murder, genocide, rape, brutality etc etc have been around since the dawn of man, and even though the Bilbe was written many years ago... these injustices are still occuring today.

Yet we are told we are created in gods image, so the burden of this rests on his/hers shoulders. And is it or is it not in the bible? Answer that please.

Of the various visionaries / holy people who have visited Hell...

Were these eye witness accounts or just guessing?

If you think about the 10 commandments (old Testament), if everybody in the world obeyed these rules, there would be a huge reduction in rape, murder, theft etc etc.

Do you really believe that for a second? Considering 1 and 2 of these commandments have nothing to do at all with ethics, they are in fact orders.

Not taking the lords name in vain? Will that really stop the things you mentioned? Or to remember to keep the sabbath day holy?

Thou shalt not kill, its slight ironic then dont you think that after this Moses ordered his followers to kill their friends for their profanity.

Safehands

ABC101 wrote: »

Ahh... Gintonious... I think you have it a bit mixed up there...

If you think about the 10 commandments (old Testament), if everybody in the world obeyed these rules, there would be a huge reduction in rape, murder, theft etc etc.

This is a small section of your reply. I have a problem with the laws of Moses, these are just a small example of what we were advised to do:
Deuteronomy 22:20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
22:21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

If these are the words of God then that God is a little sick. So they are not the words of God, clearly!

ABC101

Safehands wrote: »

This is a small section of your reply. I have a problem with the laws of Moses, these are just a small example of what we were advised to do:
Deuteronomy 22:20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
22:21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

If these are the words of God then that God is a little sick. So they are not the words of God, clearly!

Safehands,

If you look at my point N°5. I would ask you to think about that.

Don't get hung up on certain issues, Jesus does not preach stoning of girls, in fact quiet the opposite. So is God still sick? I take it you did not mean it like that... but that is a rather hurtful thing to say to a believer, not to mention offensive to God as well.

By the way... in certain parts of the world today... death for adultary can and does occur still.

Humanity still has a long way to go... unfortunately.

lazygal

ABC101 wrote: »

Safehands,

If you look at my point N°5. I would ask you to think about that.

Don't get hung up on certain issues, Jesus does not preach stoning of girls, in fact quiet the opposite. So is God still sick? I take it you did not mean it like that... but that is a rather hurtful thing to say to a believer, not to mention offensive to God as well.

By the way... in certain parts of the world today... death for adultary can and does occur still.

Humanity still has a long way to go... unfortunately.

Why is it ok to cherry pick the bible? Either it is the complete and perfect word of God which we are all to abide by or we don't get into heaven, or it isn't. Why would God include bits which we don't have to stick to any more, or parts that are open to interpretation by the thousands of religious sects calling themselves Christian? How come it was ok to stone a woman for having sex at one point in time according to God, but its not ok now? What about eating shellfish? Or not honouring your mother and father because they abused you and you don't want to be around them, does that mean you'll never get to heaven?

Safehands

ABC101 wrote: »

Safehands,
If you look at my point N°5. I would ask you to think about that.
Don't get hung up on certain issues, Jesus does not preach stoning of girls, in fact quiet the opposite. So is God still sick? I take it you did not mean it like that... but that is a rather hurtful thing to say to a believer, not to mention offensive to God as well.
By the way... in certain parts of the world today... death for adultary can and does occur still.
Humanity still has a long way to go... unfortunately.

If we have to interpret any part of the Old Testament, then the whole thing is open to interpretation. Of course I don't believe any God would instruct such barbarity. These sections simply prove that the Old Testament is not a work "inspired" by God. None of it is! There are many such inhumane sections in this book.
So if the Old Testament is not a divine work what can we conclude about Genesis? It was written by men for men with no divine assistance, that is what we can conclude. What does that tell us about Adam, Eve, the flood, the whole thing? It is a great collection of stories, some wonderful, some dreadful, written by learned men of the time, for the people of the day. There is no real truth to it though.

Harika

ABC101 wrote: »

Safehands,

If you look at my point N°5. I would ask you to think about that.

Don't get hung up on certain issues, Jesus does not preach stoning of girls, in fact quiet the opposite. So is God still sick? I take it you did not mean it like that... but that is a rather hurtful thing to say to a believer, not to mention offensive to God as well.

By the way... in certain parts of the world today... death for adultary can and does occur still.

Humanity still has a long way to go... unfortunately.

Jesus was not preaching them but confirmed that those rules from the old testament are still valid. He strongly approves of the law and the prophets. He hasn’t the slightest objection to the cruelties of the Old Testament. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)
On the other hand when he is tested about these words, with the woman that commited adultery, he send her away without this cruel punishment. So we have again this big contradiction within the bible, where theologicans thought very hard how to "fix" this and came up with several conclusions where you are free to pick out the one that fits your personal lifestyle.

RikuoAmero

If you are to ignore the Bible because of human brutality... you may as well get rid of your TV, because that contains / reports appalling injustices every hour, history books, internet all contain descriptions of various injustices.

The TV isn't telling me that what it is displaying to me is the one and true word of the one and only divine being. It's simply factual reciting of the daily news.
When I read the old testament, I read many upon many accounts of the Jews being instructed by God to attack this city, or slaughter that tribe or invade that land. God is or is not supposed to be perfect, without error, non-changing? If so, how come the change from O.T. blood-thirsty war god to (supposedly) a peace-loving hippy in the N.T.?

Of the various visionaries / holy people who have visited Hell... they speak of the most painful part of Hell. This is the complete absense of God. Once in Hell, the greatest torment is being totally cut off from God. Due to the soul having been made by God, it has a special affinity to return to God, or a desire to do so. However once in Hell, there is a complete and utter absense of God.

As I've said in previous replies, I cannot count these supposed visitations as evidence. I have literally no way to verify these claims, therefore, I don't care what you say about them. Either give me evidence supporting these claims, or don't bring them up at all.

if everybody in the world obeyed these rules, there would be a huge reduction in rape, murder, theft etc etc.

Rape is not among the decalogue (which is something I've always found hilarious about it - God takes time to give Moses his most important rules, but doesn't outright forbid slavery and rape? Nope, making sure the Jews stroke his ego is far more important than those two apparently). You might want to re-read them. Murder and theft are, but then again, there have been laws against murder and theft for longer than the Jews were an organised civilisation. Plus, as others have said, not all the decalogue have to do with obviously violent crime. What about Worship Only Me/Don't Take my Name in Vain? Or Don't worship idols (how come the catholic church doesn't list this one as part of the decalogue?) How would keeping the sabbath holy reduce violent crime?

Do not think you are the 1st to understand God's message in the Bible

Very little chance of that happening, since I don't believe it to be a god's message.

Each word was given by God to people living under hard circumstances. One has to think / attempt to understand what their problem was.... and what God wanted them to understand.

The old "times were different back then" argument. Problem with this line of thinking is that these are supposedly God's morals. His moral laws. God is supposed to be the objective source of morality, according to christians. However, what you just unconsciously admitted to there is subjective morality. Either God is the objective source of morality, thus meaning his moral laws should never change, or they do change, thus meaning he isn't objective.
Take your pick.

God taught his people from Abraham to the Apostles, but he did not teach them everything from the beginning. This is why there is a difference in teaching between Moses + Prophets and the Apostles. There is a difference between Old and New Testaments etc.

The reason for this is...? Did he intentionally plan to give an imperfect teaching to the Jews, then plan to swoop in with God's Law 2.0 Update Patch to "correct" the problems?

From the very first message God gave his people, he had in mind the coming of Jesus (with the mystery of Cross and Resurrection). Numerous prophets mention this... prepare a way for the Lord etc. It is important to under stand this link between New and Old Testaments.

Then this means it was all a set-up. Jesus is supposed to be the sacrifice to correct original sin, to pay the price. However, if you start the system with this in mind, then this means that Adam and Eve were doomed to fail. They had no choice but to eat the magic fruit. This means that what God supposedly said about punishment is completely and 100% unjust, since he intentionally started the whole thing, knowing and planning in advance the fall and knowing and planning in advance to swoop in as Jesus to save the day.

In other words... don't get HUNG UP on some strange sentences to the point of forsaking what is clear and fundamental.

Again, I have to point out the problem of no one person/denomination being able to demonstrate that they have the "correct" interpretation, of being able to "correctly" distinguish between literal and metaphor/parable/poem. If I go ask a baptist or an evangelical, they will tell me that Verse XYZ is supposed to be literally true as written, while you would tell me "nope, XYZ is a metaphor".

Brian Shanahan

RikuoAmero wrote: »

"the population of the world went through a population bottleneck when only a small number of people survived"
I'd love to know what "scientific" literature you got this from. If only a small number of people had survived, there would have been genetic inbreeding within a few generations that would have ensured the extinction of the human species. Yet here we all here.

The bottleneck he's probably referring to here is the lack of genetic variety between all the humans which live outside Africa compared to Africans (aside from descendants of those who emigrated out of Africa to other continents in the last 500 years). For example most African tribes have more genetic differences from their next door neighbour tribes than us Irish do from Chinese or Inuit.

This genetic bottleneck is proposed to have happened due to the original migration from Africa taking place at Sinai, which limited the numbers of people who left the continent back then (proposed to be as few as 10,000 individuals), and through a prolonged period of relative inbreeding the genetic pool was very much restricted for non African humans.

Of course this is another example of JC using evolution to try and disprove evolution. Oh, the ironing.

RikuoAmero

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

The bottleneck he's probably referring to here is the lack of genetic variety between all the humans which live outside Africa compared to Africans (aside from descendants of those who emigrated out of Africa to other continents in the last 500 years). For example most African tribes have more genetic differences from their next door neighbour tribes than us Irish do from Chinese or Inuit.

This genetic bottleneck is proposed to have happened due to the original migration from Africa taking place at Sinai, which limited the numbers of people who left the continent back then (proposed to be as few as 10,000 individuals), and through a prolonged period of relative inbreeding the genetic pool was very much restricted for non African humans.

Of course this is another example of JC using evolution to try and disprove evolution. Oh, the ironing.

I think you're in the wrong thread, dude. If I'm not mistaken, I said that in the Origin of Specious Nonsense thread. Of course what I said is just as valid here (since it relates to my points for there being a lack of a good justification for a belief in god), but let's not mix up what people said in other threads here.

ABC101

lazygal wrote: »

Why is it ok to cherry pick the bible? Either it is the complete and perfect word of God which we are all to abide by or we don't get into heaven, or it isn't. Why would God include bits which we don't have to stick to any more, or parts that are open to interpretation by the thousands of religious sects calling themselves Christian? How come it was ok to stone a woman for having sex at one point in time according to God, but its not ok now? What about eating shellfish? Or not honouring your mother and father because they abused you and you don't want to be around them, does that mean you'll never get to heaven?

@ Lazygal,

You sure do have a lot of questions!!!

Have you ever considered undertaking a course in Bible studies? Not sure where you are based. But there could be a Bible course running in your locality. Keep an eye out for one!!

Brian Shanahan

ABC101 wrote: »

<snip>

And all that could be gotten from that passage is that because certain things happened that you attributed to your god, then it must mean that god exists.

Confirmation bias is not evidence for god, it is simply evidence for an inability to look at the evidence with an impartial eye and make a judgement accordingly. Every single thing you said in the post was based off a presupposition that god exists, and filtered accordingly. Can you not see why this is problematical for those who do not share your belief, this fact that all your evidence is basically a justification for your need to have your beliefs be acknowledged as correct?

Festus

lazygal wrote: »

Why is it ok to cherry pick the bible?

Safehands wrote: »

If we have to interpret any part of the Old Testament, then the whole thing is open to interpretation.

One could equally ask why is it ok to cherry pick the postings

When it comes to interpreting the Bible there are a number of things that must be considered. History is one. Cherry picking is another.
Third is putting it in context. Forth is realizing that the nature of interpretation applied to one part may not apply for another.
Do we interpret proverbs as literally as we interpret history?

The Old Testament was written hundreds of years before the New Testament and it was written for the Old Covenant. With Christ and the New Testament comes the New Covenant.
Jesus Christ did not change anything of the old law as we can see with the account of what happened with the woman caught in adultery.

He said He came to fulfill the Law and in doing so with the woman He said that only he who is without sin can cast the first stone.
In Deuteronomy it is clear that these laws are for people who keep all the commandments. If they have done that then they are without sin.

It is clear then that those who were carrying out the law had decided to forget that little part of Deuteronomy. Perhaps they had a similar mindset to those who now question these laws without applying proper interpretative skills and instead relied on cherry picking and invalid interpretation to justify their own actions.

The problem with the interpretations you made is that they are narrow minded and biased by your desire to discredit the Bible rather than try to understand it. You filtered it to justify your own beliefs about the Bible based on your supposition that the words of the Bible are not Gods revelation.

ABC101 wrote: »

Have you ever considered undertaking a course in Bible studies? Not sure where you are based. But there could be a Bible course running in your locality. Keep an eye out for one!!

Excellent advice!

Harika

Festus wrote: »

Jesus Christ did not change anything of the old law as we can see with the account of what happened with the woman caught in adultery.

He said He came to fulfill the Law and in doing so He also said that only he who is without sin can cast the first stone.
In Deuteronomy it is clear that these laws are for people who keep all the commandments. If they have done that they are without sin.

It is clear then that those who were carrying out the law had decided to forget that little part of Deuteronomy. Perhaps they had a similar mindset to those who now question these laws without apply proper interpretative skills and relied on cherry picking and invalid interpretation to justify their own actions.

Where in the Deuteronomy it is listed that only people without sin are allowed to cast the first stone?

Festus

Harika wrote: »

Where in the Deuteronomy it is listed that only people without sin are allowed to cast the first stone?

Are you asking me to cherry pick Deuteronomy for you or are you just too lazy to read it for yourself?

Jesus did not tell them where it was in Deuteronomy either. Perhaps He wrote it on the ground so they could read it before He spoke to them. That would explain their actions after He spoke. Otherwise why did no one challenge Him the way you challenged me?
I would suggest that they dropped their stones and walked away because they knew that what He had said was true and they were guilty of misinterpreting the law.

Anyway, I take my cue from Jesus and suggest you inform yourself of Deuteronomy.

Harika

Festus wrote: »

Are you asking me to cherry pick Deuteronomy for you or are you just too lazy to read it for yourself?

Jesus did not tell them where it was in Deuteronomy either. Perhaps He wrote it on the ground so they could read it before He spoke to them. That would explain their actions after He spoke. Otherwise why did no one challenge Him the way you challenged me?
I would suggest that they dropped their stones and walked away because they knew that what He had said was true and they were guilty of misinterpreting the law.

Anyway, I take my cue from Jesus and suggest you inform yourself of Deuteronomy.

He wrote it on the ground because it was Sabbath, so in the end Jesus modified or put an addendum to the Deuteronomy that was law for several hundreds of years. So why did he or his father not clarify this in the first version?

Festus

Harika wrote: »

He wrote it on the ground because it was Sabbath, so in the end Jesus modified or put an addendum to the Deuteronomy that was law for several hundreds of years. So why did he or his father not clarify this in the first version?

Who said He modified it? Are you claiming Jesus modified the law despite what you have been told about what He said about the law? Are you claiming Jesus contradicted Himself and if so on what grounds?

Do you know which day this event occurred on and that it was a Sabbath day?
If it was the Sabbath what does the Sabbath have to do with writing on the ground? Have you found a Judaic law somewhere that limits writing to being on the ground only when writing on the Sabbath?

The law is clear in Deuteronomy. Keep the law, and this applies to all including the accusers.
If those who hold the law do not keep to it, all of it, what right to they have to enforce it, any of it?

Harika wrote: »

Jesus was not preaching them but confirmed that those rules from the old testament are still valid. He strongly approves of the law and the prophets. He hasn’t the slightest objection to the cruelties of the Old Testament. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)
On the other hand when he is tested about these words, with the woman that commited adultery, he send her away without this cruel punishment. So we have again this big contradiction within the bible, where theologicans thought very hard how to "fix" this and came up with several conclusions where you are free to pick out the one that fits your personal lifestyle.

and again we have shown that there is no contradiction in the Bible, but there are contradictions in your own postings. In one post you claim Jesus amended the law. In another you quote the Bible confirming Jesus did not change the law but rather strongly approved of it.

Brian Shanahan

lazygal wrote: »

I think he or she is arguing that because religious orders decades ago set up schools

Not true, the state built, set up, and staffed the schools, and then for some insane reason decided to hand them all over to those two major parasitic organisations the rcc and coi.

Brian Shanahan

Deleted User wrote: »

So you'll be refusing to answer the question? I can't see how my motives have anything to do with your answer to it to be honest

It's not so much your motives as his fear of being found out believing in something that he knows he has no valid reason for believing in.

When people of festus' type of belief get defensive over their beliefs being shown into the light and examined, it is generally because the penny has finally dropped, and (to use the expression) their particular emperor has no clothes. They realise that their beliefs are without foundation, and it scares them.

Brian Shanahan

shaz90ish wrote: »

It would be a lot easier for everyone, i agree..but again people aren't interested. God has given us a free will choice while we are on earth. Satan, on the other hand knows his time his short. So he goes on deceiving others

Free will and satan are both incompatible with your god (I'm assuming that you believe in some form of the Abrahamic god), because your god is supposed to be perfect in every way.

He is supposed to be omniscient, well free will of other actors destroys omniscience, because now god doesn't know what's going to happen in the future.

He is also supposed to be omnipotent (which, by the way is completely incompatible with omniscience), but having an independent satan who is the sole ruler of evil defeats omnipotence because now there is an area of reality over which god has no control.

You see it is this kind of stuff that has stopped us believing, the fact that we have to employ doublethink constantly just to hold the belief in our heads doesn't sit well with us.

Brian Shanahan

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Socrates with even greater scepticism because none of his work survives.

Mainly because he never committed anything to paper. Everything we have of Socrates came from transcripts of his speeches written by his students Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon.

Safehands

Festus wrote: »

One could equally ask why is it ok to cherry pick the postings
The problem with the interpretations you made is that they are narrow minded and biased by your desire to discredit the Bible rather than try to understand it. You filtered it to justify your own beliefs about the Bible based on your supposition that the words of the Bible are not Gods revelation.

If quoting the bible, as literally as I can do, is narrow minded and biased and is seen by you as an attempt to discredit the bible, then I'm not sure what that says (a) for the bible or (b) for your opinions of what is written in it. Maybe when you read these tracts you actually see words which are completely different to the words which are actually there.
I didn't filter anything. I quoted a tract from Deuteronomy. Sorry if you didn't like it Festus. It is pretty nasty, I agree.

Peregrinus

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Mainly because he never committed anything to paper. Everything we have of Socrates came from transcripts of his speeches written by his students Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon.

It's worse that that. While the writings of Plato, Aristophanes, etc do attribute speeches to Socrates, these are not "transcripts" of any speech actually delivered by Socrates. Socrates appears as a character in the plays of Aristophanes, but they are admittedly plays, not dramatisations of real-life events. Likewise Plato's Symposium which features Socrates as a dinner guest is not a memoir of actual dinners; we know that it impossible that all the people who converse together in the symposium could ever have attended the same dinner. In many matters of fact the sources contradict one another - Aristophanes' Socrates earns his living by teaching, for example, while Plato's Socrates not only has never accepted money for teaching but considers it disgraceful to do so.

What Plato, etc, do is to produce literary and dramatic works which (they invite us to believe) accurately communicate the beliefs and ideas of Socrates, or at least some of them. But they do not claim that either the events or the speeches in those works ever occurred; they may not have occurred at all, or they may be loosely based on fact, but very freely adapted and embellished for dramatic, polemic, rhetorical, etc purposes.

Festus

Safehands wrote: »

If quoting the bible, as literally as I can do, is narrow minded and biased and is seen by you as an attempt to discredit the bible, then I'm not sure what that says (a) for the bible or (b) for your opinions of what is written in it. Maybe when you read these tracts you actually see words which are completely different to the words which are actually there.
I didn't filter anything. I quoted a tract from Deuteronomy. Sorry if you didn't like it Festus. It is pretty nasty, I agree.

You cherry picked and quoted one section out of context. Why did you not also include the part before that that is part of the same law?

The section you referred to applies to a woman who has done wrong not only against the family she was born to but also to the family she was married into.

[13] If a man marry a wife, and afterwards hate her, [14] And seek occasions to put her away, laying to her charge a very ill name, and say: I took this woman to wife, and going in to her, I found her not a virgin: [15] Her father and mother shall take her, and shall bring with them the tokens of her virginity to the ancients of the city that are in the gate: [16] And the father shall say: I gave my daughter unto this man to wife: and because he hateth her, [17] He layeth to her charge a very ill name, so as to say: I found not thy daughter a virgin: and behold these are the tokens of my daughter' s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the ancients of the city: [18] And the ancients of that city shall take that man, and beat him, [19] Condemning him besides in a hundred sides of silver, which he shall give to the damsel' s father, because he hath defamed by a very ill name a virgin of Israel: and he shall have her to wife, and may not put her away all the days of his life. [20] But if what he charged her with be true, and virginity be not found in the damsel:
[21] They shall cast her out of the doors of her father' s house, and the men of the city shall stone her to death, and she shall die: because she hath done a wicked thing in Israel, to play the whore in her father' s house: and thou shalt take away the evil out of the midst of thee.

You do filter. You post only what suits you when taken out of context. Here is the rest of that law

[22] If a man lie with another man' s wife, they shall both die, that is to say, the adulterer and the adulteress: and thou shalt take away the evil out of Israel. [23] If a man have espoused a damsel that is a virgin, and some one find her in the city, and lie with her, [24] Thou shalt bring them both out to the gate of that city, and they shall be stoned: the damsel, because she cried not out, being in the city: the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour' s wife. And thou shalt take away the evil from the midst of thee. [25] But if a man find a damsel that is betrothed, in the field, and taking hold of her, lie with her, he alone shall die: [26] The damsel shall suffer nothing, neither is she guilty of death: for as a robber riseth against his brother, and taketh away his life, so also did the damsel suffer: [27] She was alone in the field: she cried, and there was no man to help her. [28] If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, who is not espoused, and taking her, lie with her, and the matter come to judgment: [29] He that lay with her shall give to the father of the maid fifty sides of silver, and shall have her to wife, because he hath humbled her: he may not put her away all the days of his life.

As for opinions - I think being honest and truthful is more important.

BTW, don't neglect to consider my response to another poster regarding only those who have kept all the laws and are without sin can cast stones.