The atheist Daniel Dennett specifically went out of his way to make his book friendly and non-offensive to religious people:
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Hah! Yeah, well I'm amused by it, because I went out of my way in my book to address reasonable religious people. And I test-flew the draft with groups of students who were deeply religious. And indeed, the first draft incurred some real anguish. And so I made adjustments and made adjustments. And it didn't do any good in the end because I still got hammered for being for being rude and aggressive. And I came to realise that it's a no-win situation. It's a mug's game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. You know, they sort of play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity, and you're faced with a choice of, well, am I gonna be rude or am I going to articulate this criticism?
Religion seems to be the only thing that's taboo to disagree with. I've tried my best to be polite, not just in this thread, but overall. Don't know if I succeeded, but I found that it really comes down to patience. But no matter what you do, eventually, somebody is going to get offended because religious people have decided to base their entire life belief system on dubious ideologies - there is no skating around this. If we really wanted to get offended though we could be offended by:
1) Genital mutilation (an entirely religious concept)
2) Suicide bombing (an entirely religious concept)
3) Children not receiving vaccines, getting a poor education, or being indoctrinated at a young age to eschew critical thinking for fear of burning in hell.
4) And ultimately, the idea that we can't be good moral people without a book or god to tell us how, or that we only do good things because we have to be threatened with eternal torture, or bribed with eternal paradise. This is a concept that insults and degrades humanity at its very core.
To be fair, I don't think this will ever happen, and I'm not sure if that's even a bad thing. Eiviyn said earlier in this chat that the 'default' standpoint to assume god doesn't exist, just as it's the default standpoint to assume invisible pink unicorns don't exist. The more I think about that, the more I disagree with it. Sure, Eiviyn probably meant 'god' as in 'the christian god' when he originally typed it, but the fact remains that there HAS to be some kind of unmoved mover. And people will always worship that kind of power. They should, even. Unless of course we don't understand one bit about the concept of time and end up finding out we live in some kind of infinite loop somehow.
Even if there is supposed to be a prime mover, the mover having traits such as jealousy, omnibenevolence, and anything else associated with humans would be redundant. Why can't the universe itself be the unmoved mover? It's the simplest, most elegant explanation.
There are alot of theories out there about what caused the big bang. Here's a short video about m-theory for laymen such as ourselves:
From what I understand, dark energy, which makes up something like 75% of the matter/energy content in the universe, is nothing more than higher dimensional objects called branes interacting with our universe. That's why no scientists can identify what dark energy is made of, it doesn't actually exist in our 3d space, but it does have a gravitational effect on our 3d space. The dark energy fuels the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, so it is increasing and it will eventually come to dominate. When dark energy is highest, it means that these branes are more energetic, and this forces them to collide, creating a big bang. Then they settle down, and wait for it to happen again. This process repeats, ad nauseum.
According to this hypothesis, the "braneworld" is the prime mover.
Okay so you dont pray to god on the CHANCE that hes not real because it would waste your time... haha being illogical much sooo waste 10 seconds here and there, or risk even if itsonly a 50% chance, Going to hell for eternity... hahaah Im sorry but I cant help but laugh at atheist... agnosticism I can understand and pray for... but atheism thats just dumb... and kinda arrogent, thinking that you are the best thing their is, that humans are the greatest. ahahahaahah
Just you promise me guys, that when the time comes religion is abolished you won't judge people because of what they believe but in what they've done.
I hope you continue to detest violence, injustice, and uphold civil rights, and let me have a chance in the pursuit of happiness. I hope there won't be a law that will be passed saying, "Any man who claims to hold any form of religion or belief in a supernatural deity or deities, is an enemy to our freedoms," or anything of the sort.
I know how extremist can be very destructive and inhuman, I hope whatever non-believers stand on today don't go into extremes as well.
Provided that people don't try to influence public policy or make poor decisions for their children because of their religion, I really could care less what people believe "personally". I still think the indoctrination of children is evil, but I guess it's not my place to challenge that yet. =/
If Religion is Abolished... There will be mass bloodshed... we will not be persecuted, USA was founded on that principal. We would revolt and even if its my Grandkids Grandkids, I hope they will revolt too.
I think GNA is referring more to the fact that religion will inevitably die out from people coming to their senses because we live in the second millennium, not the stone age. But that's probably wishful thinking.
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What an ignorant statement, from the writer... What I read was this... Atheist have convinced themselves god isnt real, and IF he was... noticed they are still humoring the idea meaning in their heart no matter how small they still believe so they contradict themselves, That if god was real, it would be "too much work" to go to heaven.. so what I am seeing is... Atheist are too lazy to be decent humans... Just from what that article said.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C. S. Lewis
If somebody gives me proof that the christian version of God and the afterlife exists, I'd abandon everything I'm doing now and start living like a monk. So my question to you is...what's stopping you from doing that? If your rewards in an infinite paradise are proportional to your behavior in your short finite lifetime on this rock, then you should be on your knees praying & glorifying god every waking moment. If you're absolutely certain that God exists, you're wasting your time typing on this forum, making maps, and having any pretensions of living a fulfilling and successful life. You have to pick whether Christianity is of infinite importance, or zero importance.
I am still awaiting your explanation of evolution from your point of view.
He's an old-earth creationist. His view is that evolution happened, but the theory has problems, and God still created all of us. It's really nothing more than an attempt to reconcile these stone-age myths with modern science in an attempt to save face. It requires cherrypicking one part of the bible to be figurative, and everything else to be literal.
The challenge faced by theists who believe the radiometric dating & archaeology that shows humanity to be tens of thousands of years old is summed up best by Hitchens:
Commandments 1 through 4 have as much of an importance in the real world as what color socks I want to wear today. There is more important stuff to worry about than these petty trivialities. 5 through 10 should be obvious to any decent human being and not need any religion to "make us more conscious of it".
There is nothing that any holy man or holy book has ever said that wasn't either:
A) Wrong or just plain silly
B) Immediately obvious
If you got rid of science we'd all be living in the stone age, but what value does religion have on our knowledge & morals? You could get rid of all the knowledge of all the religions combined, and nobody would notice or care.
Atheists "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Forgot that one.
Your evidence, God does not reveal himself.
Our evidence, God reveals himself.
Is bald a hair color? Is off a TV channel? Is non-belief a belief? Our position is simple: God has as much evidence for his existence as Thor, Zeus & Wotan. Therefore they can all be dismissed until someone has real proof.
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Oh and I was not born a Christian, mentioned that before(If this was addressed at me?)
The act of switching from one fictional myth to another "superior" fictional myth only served to strengthen your indoctrination.
My mapping tip? Don't forget to switch the fill texture tool back to what you had it so that your map doesn't crash when you accidentally click on something.
The fact that our DNA is similar to all other animals is proof of a common ancestor, not a problem. Even though we are 99% chimp, much of that DNA is junk info, and even then we still have like 15 million base-pairs that are different.
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Alright where does it say rape?. What if the woman naturally decided to
cheat and be with another man, or be sneaky sneaky on the side? You
know, infidelity. Is that not common in today`s world?
What's the point of saying "in broad daylight" if he meant infidelity, and not rape? Here's what ended up happening:
"So they set up a tent on the palace roof where everyone could see it, and Absalom went in and had sex with his father's concubines." - samuel 2 16:21
So David's son just went in & had sex with David's wives, and I'm sure they all randomly agreed to this and enjoyed it, since apparently God is morally perfect? In fact, God just broke two of his own commandments: "You shall not commit adultery" and "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife".
Once again, God forces his people to commit the same sins that he himself condemns.
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This is a good case of a mistranslation http://bible.cc/deuteronomy/22-28.htm
Out of 15 or so different bible translations, only 2 use the word
`rape`.
Seriously? The other translations say "seizes her and lies with her" and "lay hold on her". Only by being willfully ignorant could one not interpret that as rape. I knew you were going to make this difficult on me with semantics, which is why i didn't want to get into this in the first place, but come on man.
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If you are a father or whoever, but lets say father, and you catch your
daughter being naughty before marriage(The guy seduced her obviously).
Then that dude has to marry her and be responsible for that with
whatever payments or anything. You cant just `hit and run` and dump her
with a possible baby, atleast thats not what God intended for man to do.
How do you honestly read the original passage and get this out of it...?
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God never commanded them to do that. So your point is...?
That the bible is a god-awful philosophy book to live your life by. Whether god commanded anybody or not is beside the point. The point is that this book is a vile account of bronze-age troglodytes instead of a "perfect holy book from the creator of the universe". Not something that I'd ever teach my kids.
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So it becomes apparent that God never commanded rape. You were either
lying or were misinformed. Whatever the reason, I forgive you.
Guess you're going to make me continue then.
"When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house. [....] However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion."
Here God approves of forcibly taking other women, and basically treating them as property.
"For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. " Zechariah 14:2
God yet again approves of rape & genocide. I'm waiting for your reply where it turns out that other translations do not use the word "ravished". <_<
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. Numbers 31:15-18
It is said that the test of morality of any nation is in how it treats its prisoners of war. God treats his prisoners by slaughtering children & allowing the women to be raped.
When I hear a theist say "I did my homework" I think of a drug addict saying "no, I'm clean this time, for real".
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Yes you are correct. My religion is superior compared to Hinduism,
Paganism, etc. It cant be superior to Judaism, since we have the same
root and core beliefs as to God. And yes there are issues as to why the
Jews dont(not all , but most) want to believe in the messiah.
Let me ask you something.
Superior to paganism? Jesus is a blatant ripoff of Mithra.
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God says, Referring to the Messiah. "You will do more than restore the
people of Israel to me. I will make you a light to the Gentiles(The
nations), and you will bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."
(Isaiah 49:6)
Without Jesus, Christians would never have come into the understanding
and knowledge of the true God. It would have always been a Jewish thing.
Now tell me, How on earth is this scripture so perfectly accurate and
fulfilled?. Given it was written thousands of years ago?(And BEFORE
Jesus Christ).
Lucky guessing by Bronze age cavemen?. Right.....
The ends of the earth eh?
Guess you and me have a totally different definition of "perfectly accurate". Again, your religion is not automatically better than any others' on that pie chart.
The biblical chronology puts the flood at 2345 BC, so again, my point is made.
No it does not. Pulling stuff out the air is funny. I guess your point is not made.
The flood probably occurred 5000 years ago, but Im not certain on this.
Andrew R. George(The guy who translated the "Epic of Gilgamesh") submits that the flood story in Genesis 6–8 matches the Gilgamesh flood myth so closely, "few doubt" that it derives from the Mesopotamian account.[12] What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.
You just gave me a passage from wikipedia which states that genesis was ripped off the epic of gilgamesh. -_-
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You can call it a myth, but your previous point of other cultures at the time having no record of the Global flood is completed flawed and incorrect.
The fact that you believe the Epic of Gilgamesh is a myth yet still want to use it as a reference is like saying "You can call Harry Potter a myth if you want, but you can't prove that people in the early 2000s had no record of Harry Potter defeating the evil wizard Lord Voldemort."
Even if there is evidence for Gilgamesh, it really doesn't matter because the surviving evidence from the dawn of civilization is pretty shoddy and does little to help us separate myth from historical fact. The fact remains that archaeological evidence does not point to any large flood which wiped out all of humanity. If a flood did happen it would have been recorded in far more places than in a book that amounts to a bedtime story.
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Jesus was historically real. The events(miracles etc) and his divinity is subject to whatever the person in question is willing to believe. Though, it seems likely that all those events did occur and this was the birth of early Christianity(Which were Jews, I might add).
Yes, in all likelyhood the man named Jesus existed. He was an Arab, not a white man with long hair. Here is just some food for thought:
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Mithra was sent by the Father God down to Earth to confirm his contract with Man.
Mithra was born of a Virgin through - Immaculate Conception - He was born of Anahita, an immaculate virgin mother.
Mithra was born in a stable - We celebrate his birth on December 25th -.
Mithra was visited by wise men bearing gifts.
Mithra had 12 disciples - He was called the Messiah -.
Mithra was also the god of Darius, conqueror of Babylon, He was called - - Messiah - - or Christos by Jews during their Captivity.
Mithra made a (Contract) or (Covenant) with Man confirming an older contract with God - The Persian word Mithra literally means - - Contract. - -
Mithra celebrated a last supper with his disciples before his death.
Mithra died to atone for the sins of Man.
Mithra was resurrected on a Sunday.
Mithra ascended into Heaven to rejoin his Father.
Mithra will return to pass judgment on Man - He was known as the judger of souls -.
On judgment day, the dead will arise and be judged by Mithra.
Mithra will send sinners to HELL.
Mithra will send the faithful to HEAVEN.
On judgment day there will be a final conflict between Good and Evil - The forces of Evil will be destroyed and the saved will live in paradise forever -.
Mithra is part of a Holy Trinity the - (Father, Son, And Holy Spirit) -, that took human form.
Mithra is depicted as having a halo, (a circular band of light around his head).
Mithra followers drink wine and eat bread, which represent his blood and flesh.
Mithra followers are baptized.
Saturday and Sunday, the two (2) days of the week to rest and celebrate.
Again, I'm not a bible/zoroastrian scholar, and I'm sure some of these are exaggerations/errors, but that doesn't invalidate all of the similarities between the two figures. Though if you really did your homework as you claim, you'd already know the bible was tampered with.
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1. You sure?. From that link
"There was no question that there was a flood and there is no question that it was a universal flood."
Yes I'm positive. Science is not wrong. But there is no way you can conclude that there was a global flood from these results. Whether the misrepresentation is occurring in the creationist that transcribed the article to this obviously-biased website, or whether its in the reader's digest article itself, or whether its in the geologist who is out to prove the Noah myth, there is undoubtedly some misrepresentation going on somewhere. If there was really a global flood, more geologists would acknowledge it.
So with all that being said, have we established that the flood was a fictional event yet?
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2. Yes, valid point. However to conclude there was never a flood on massive local scales or Global, or that the latter caused the former, is simply wrong.
There could very well have been a massive local flood, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. There most definitely was not a global flood. At this point I could stake my life on it.
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Yep, I dont agree with the YEC age of the earth. Mentioned that before.
Out of curiosity, you do believe in evolution right?
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1. You were never a Christian(Just like most Christians are not Christians).
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10)
If you took the above scripture at face value, you would be more enlightened than your current state today. But that is obviously where you went wrong. Using grounds of morality to challenge the bible does seem like the easy way out.
So what you're saying is that the con-men who wrote the bible have a verse where they say that you're ignorant if you don't believe in the bible?
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Your ignorance on the bible was magnified when you kept mentioning God commands rape. Not only is it a lie, but the fact that you readily believed it, was arrogant. For everything else, It was fair assumption, but not that.
Make no mistake: discussing scripture is the last thing I want to do because it has zero applicable use in the real world, and again: batman vs. superman. But since you want it so badly, here we go again.
Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun." - 2 Samuel 12:11
God is angry because David killed Uriah. So as a punishment, God will have his innocent wives raped while everyone else watches. Typical pathetic bronze-age morals.
"If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her."(Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
What kind of nutjob makes a rape victim marry her attacker?
Judges:21
"They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, "Go and hide in the vineyards. When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife! And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, 'Please be understanding. Let them have your daughters, for we didn't find enough wives for them when we destroyed Jabesh-gilead. "
So here, the Israelites, continuing in their tradition of "do whatever the hell you want because we have divine authority & we're special", decided to kidnap women after slaughtering all the other women & children of Jabesh-gilead.
Everytime God says "But you may keep for yourselves all the women," I consider it to be rape by virtue of the fact that the women were stolen from their husbands and are now forced to procreate with their new captors. I already know you consider this to be a benevolent act where the Isrealites simply adopt new wives for which to care, so spare me your inevitable response.
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Except the evidence in the bible is vastly greater and superior than any other religion. Funny how you mention Jews and Christians there, When its the same thing. Hinduism has virtually no evidence behind it and is illogical, It truly is the greatest `faith` religion. Only the bible serves reliable to testing, Which I can demonstrate to you against every other religion.
So again you make my point by reiterating how superior your religion is. The primary contention between Jews & Christians as far as I understand it is whether Jesus was the messiah. This is not a small detail. Also, Jews don't believe in eternal suffering in hell (a ridiculous concept of justice).
You're an intelligent guy, and while religion makes normally intelligent people say some stupid things, I hope you can at least see the arrogance of claiming that your religion is better than all others. If God actually cared what you believe, why do other religions even exist? As far as I'm concerned, they all have the same non-evidence for their existence, and the fact that there are even other options to Christianity is the most damning proof that it's not so special.
False. It is important to realize that recorded Egyptian history begins about 3000 BC.
The biblical chronology puts the flood at 2345 BC, so again, my point is made. The tombs dated from the time of the flood have no evidence of flooding either.
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A number of Babylonian documents have been discovered which describe the same flood.
The Sumerian King List, for example, lists kings who reigned for long periods of time. Then a great flood came. Following the flood, Sumerian kings ruled for much shorter periods of time. This is the same pattern found in the Bible. Men had long life spans before the flood and shorter life spans after the flood. The 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic speaks of an ark, animals taken on the ark, birds sent out during the course of the flood, the ark landing on a mountain, and a sacrifice offered after the ark landed.
The epic of Gilgamesh is a myth. The flood was said to have occured in the early dynastic period. Here is a sample of the history from this period:
"The main part of the third millennium, now called the Early Dynastic period, saw the gradual development of Sumerian civilization, based on numerous city states. From the Early Dynastic period comes the earliest Sumerian literature, including the epic poetry about Gilgamesh. The Sumerians lived in a complex, unpredictable and frequently hostile environment. They had to contend with floods, droughts, storms, dust, heat, disease and death. They strove to uncover order and organization in the world to overcome feelings of futility and powerlessness. "
No mention of a global flood, and no mention of something as important as humanity being wiped out.
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That aside, there are many references from a broad spectrum of ancient civilizations that testify to a Worldwide Flood. And while this doesn't "prove" that there was a worldwide flood, it does add (significant) weight to the Biblical account in Genesis of just such an event.
There are more differences in the flood myths than similarities by virtue of the fact that the myth is reinvented by every culture. But people also independently came up with the ideas that disease is caused by demons and that dragons existed, just like people all over the world claim to have seen aliens & UFOs. Whatever myths people independently created in ancient history do not give any extra weight to anything or mean anything.
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indicates they were derived from the same origin (the Bible's record)
The flood of Gilgamesh was written before 2000 B.C, and Genesis was written in 400 BC, so I fail to see how it's other religions that are doing the plagiarizing. You need to start considering the fact that your religion has some serious elements of plagiarism, like that Jesus is basically a copy of Mithra.
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2. I doubt the presumed(or expected) findings of the `Greenland` ice cores offer any certainty or credibility to the point of it being 100%(that it alone could suffice as full validation). Even still, here is something to consider:
In the late 60's and early 70's:
"Two American oceanographic vessels pulled from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico several long, slender cores of sediment. Included in them were the shells of tiny one-celled planktonic organisms called foraminifera. While living on the surface, these organisms lock into their shells a chemical record of the temperature and salinity of the water. When they reproduce, the shells are discarded and drop to the bottom. A cross-section of that bottom ... carries a record of climates that may go back more than 100 million years. Every inch of core may represent as much as 1000 years of the earth's past." Emphasis Added
"The cores were analyzed in two separate investigations, by Cesare Emiliani of the University of Miami, and James Kennett of the University of Rhode Island and Nicholas Shackleton of Cambridge University. Both analyses indicated a dramatic change in salinity, providing compelling evidence of a vast flood of fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico. Using radiocarbon, geochemist Jerry Stripp of the University of Miami dated the flood at about 11,600 years ago." To Emiliani, all the questions and arguments are minor beside the single fact that a vast amount of fresh melt water poured into the Gulf of Mexico. 'We know this,' he says, 'because the oxygen isotope ratios of the foraminifera shells show a marked temporary decrease in the salinity of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It clearly shows that there was a major period of flooding from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago... There was no question that there was a flood and there is no question that it was a universal flood. Emphasis Added
"Emiliani's findings are corroborated by geologists Kennett and Shackleton, who concluded that there was a 'massive inpouring of glacial melt water into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River system. At the time of maximum inpouring of this water, surface salinities were... reduced by about ten percent."
Couple things:
1) This proves that there was a flood in the Gulf of Mexico, not the entire planet. If you want to prove a global flood, it has to be in all the ice cores, and it's not in the Greenland ice cores.
2) Noah's flood was not 10000 years ago, therefore this can all be dismissed right off the bat.
3) I find it funny that you dismissed my sources as "biased", even though I haven't seen you get your info from anywhere else besides creationist websites. Here is the one that you copy/pasted your latest info from: http://www.earthage.org/floodevidences/more_flood_evidences.htm
Aside from the fact that the info comes from a Reader's Digest article (not the most prestigious of scientific journals), it's the front page of the site that bothers me the most. Seriously. Here is their understanding of evolution:
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Your Great, Great, 1000th Great Grandfather
was a Jellyfish ... that ...
(over millions and millions of years) ...
might have (just) evolved from ...
say, an Amoeba ...
that resulted from a lightning bolt ...
that struck a primordial slime-pool ...
with just the right mixture on chemicals ...
or
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Hello, Is Anybody Home? Cause Mother Earth may Not be "Billions of Years" Old: after All
facepalm
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3. Such a broad statement makes you lose some credibility for a plethora of reasons.
I fail to see why. Theists make factual statement about physical reality and so far they're the only ones that can't seem to move on after their theories are discredited. When people deny core scientific frameworks like evolution, it starts to become a problem.
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To conclude. There are vast amounts of data scientific or otherwise that can be used to advocate a global flood or not.
That's because the ancient world had plenty of floods, some of them serious ones at that. Theists misrepresent whatever evidence they can find for any flood because they don't actually care about geology & science. The only time theists care about science is when they're trying to find proof for their already pre-determined conclusions. Obviously not all theists, but still.
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Women aren`t any more innocent than men. Back in the ancient world, and even now. Age also makes little difference for the person
Just give it a rest dude. I've heard every excuse for genocide imaginable by now.
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Anyway, for Sodom and Gomorrah, there were none righteous. Except Lot and his family.
Then Abraham said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten(righteous) can be found there?" God answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.".
There`s your answer. Nothing more I can say or justify.
That's fantastic, but we're not talking about Sodom & Gomorrah, so it's not a very good answer.
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Sigh. This is one of the reasons, but not the main reason(I see my last post was written in vain).
I...never said it was the main reason. In fact I said "justifications", as in, plural. But thanks for conceding the point I guess? <_<
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Also, no where does God command rape. If you make one more ill-educated assumption like this, I will conclude our dialogue finished because I have no time for discourse with a person that is emotionally biased and has blinders on. Such interaction does nothing for me.
I used to be a Christian, and it's not difficult to cherrypick the meaning or translation to justify pretty much any passage you want. I won't be making any more assumptions about the bible because Tolkfan was pretty much right, debating this book is like debating batman vs. superman. It seems that you've already made up your mind that the bible "is the most perfect & historically accurate book ever" so there's nothing else to discuss. But at least I can learn some more about geology.
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"Ah yea but cavemen invented the bible and God to Justify those events". No, I can quite certainly say the bible is the inspired and written word of God and not an invention of man. Not because the `bible` says so, but because of my faith in the evidence that proves the contrary. I also would expect that you do not believe simply because an `atheist` says or assumes so, that you would also test any such claims. Though that might be wishful thinking on my part.
Christians: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Jews: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Sikhs: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Hindus: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Muslims: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
I didn't follow up the whole conversation but the argument that SC2 marine suit is a new version and not only an art upgrade of the SC1 version is wrong. Simply because Raynor's suit is older than SC1 (He got his suit during the Guild Wars as told in the Heaven's Devils book). I believe most if not all arguments in this thread fall in the same category. We could analyze Goliaths, Firebats (the strongest change in design by far) or any other unit. They are all art upgrades and I believe Blizzard doesn't even care about it that much.
EDIT: Siege Tank is one of the exceptions. Crucio is definitely not the Arclite.
Fair enough, but Battlecruisers are another exception as the SC2 ones do have a distinct class name (Minotaur) and are clearly different to artwork of the Behemoth class.
No dude. All BCs in SC2 use the same model for story-mode & for in-game. If we go by your theory that the story mode Hyperion model is supposed to represent only a behemoth, then that means we saw exactly zero minotaurs in the entire game's story mode. It would mean that both Mengsk & Warfield fly around in outdated battlecruiser models.
The Hyperion story-mode model doesn't even look remotely like a behemoth. Look at the Hyperion & the giant circle on its back wings, and look at the old behemoths in the sclegacy comparison picture. Even if your theory was true, you'd still have it backwards.
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Out of curiosity, is there any benefit to using this instead of regular triggers?
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I know this is over but here's my ice bridge:
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The atheist Daniel Dennett specifically went out of his way to make his book friendly and non-offensive to religious people:
Religion seems to be the only thing that's taboo to disagree with. I've tried my best to be polite, not just in this thread, but overall. Don't know if I succeeded, but I found that it really comes down to patience. But no matter what you do, eventually, somebody is going to get offended because religious people have decided to base their entire life belief system on dubious ideologies - there is no skating around this. If we really wanted to get offended though we could be offended by:
1) Genital mutilation (an entirely religious concept)
2) Suicide bombing (an entirely religious concept)
3) Children not receiving vaccines, getting a poor education, or being indoctrinated at a young age to eschew critical thinking for fear of burning in hell.
4) And ultimately, the idea that we can't be good moral people without a book or god to tell us how, or that we only do good things because we have to be threatened with eternal torture, or bribed with eternal paradise. This is a concept that insults and degrades humanity at its very core.
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Even if there is supposed to be a prime mover, the mover having traits such as jealousy, omnibenevolence, and anything else associated with humans would be redundant. Why can't the universe itself be the unmoved mover? It's the simplest, most elegant explanation.
There are alot of theories out there about what caused the big bang. Here's a short video about m-theory for laymen such as ourselves:
From what I understand, dark energy, which makes up something like 75% of the matter/energy content in the universe, is nothing more than higher dimensional objects called branes interacting with our universe. That's why no scientists can identify what dark energy is made of, it doesn't actually exist in our 3d space, but it does have a gravitational effect on our 3d space. The dark energy fuels the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, so it is increasing and it will eventually come to dominate. When dark energy is highest, it means that these branes are more energetic, and this forces them to collide, creating a big bang. Then they settle down, and wait for it to happen again. This process repeats, ad nauseum.
According to this hypothesis, the "braneworld" is the prime mover.
He converted to Christianity later in life.
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Not sure if serious, but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deities
It's not a 50% chance, it's more like 0.1%. Personally, I'm throwing my lot in with Thor. Good luck! :-D
Provided that people don't try to influence public policy or make poor decisions for their children because of their religion, I really could care less what people believe "personally". I still think the indoctrination of children is evil, but I guess it's not my place to challenge that yet. =/
I think GNA is referring more to the fact that religion will inevitably die out from people coming to their senses because we live in the second millennium, not the stone age. But that's probably wishful thinking.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C. S. Lewis
If somebody gives me proof that the christian version of God and the afterlife exists, I'd abandon everything I'm doing now and start living like a monk. So my question to you is...what's stopping you from doing that? If your rewards in an infinite paradise are proportional to your behavior in your short finite lifetime on this rock, then you should be on your knees praying & glorifying god every waking moment. If you're absolutely certain that God exists, you're wasting your time typing on this forum, making maps, and having any pretensions of living a fulfilling and successful life. You have to pick whether Christianity is of infinite importance, or zero importance.
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He's an old-earth creationist. His view is that evolution happened, but the theory has problems, and God still created all of us. It's really nothing more than an attempt to reconcile these stone-age myths with modern science in an attempt to save face. It requires cherrypicking one part of the bible to be figurative, and everything else to be literal.
The challenge faced by theists who believe the radiometric dating & archaeology that shows humanity to be tens of thousands of years old is summed up best by Hitchens:
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Commandments 1 through 4 have as much of an importance in the real world as what color socks I want to wear today. There is more important stuff to worry about than these petty trivialities. 5 through 10 should be obvious to any decent human being and not need any religion to "make us more conscious of it".
There is nothing that any holy man or holy book has ever said that wasn't either:
A) Wrong or just plain silly
B) Immediately obvious
If you got rid of science we'd all be living in the stone age, but what value does religion have on our knowledge & morals? You could get rid of all the knowledge of all the religions combined, and nobody would notice or care.
Is bald a hair color? Is off a TV channel? Is non-belief a belief? Our position is simple: God has as much evidence for his existence as Thor, Zeus & Wotan. Therefore they can all be dismissed until someone has real proof.
The act of switching from one fictional myth to another "superior" fictional myth only served to strengthen your indoctrination.
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My mapping tip? Don't forget to switch the fill texture tool back to what you had it so that your map doesn't crash when you accidentally click on something.
Happened to me like 5 times. -_-
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Bill Nye on Creationism:
Scientists don't get offended when someone says that their version of reality is wrong. Religious people shouldn't either.
Though I admit that George Carlin clip is always too funny not to post. :P
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Thought the same exact thing. :P
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The fact that our DNA is similar to all other animals is proof of a common ancestor, not a problem. Even though we are 99% chimp, much of that DNA is junk info, and even then we still have like 15 million base-pairs that are different.
What's the point of saying "in broad daylight" if he meant infidelity, and not rape? Here's what ended up happening:
"So they set up a tent on the palace roof where everyone could see it, and Absalom went in and had sex with his father's concubines." - samuel 2 16:21
So David's son just went in & had sex with David's wives, and I'm sure they all randomly agreed to this and enjoyed it, since apparently God is morally perfect? In fact, God just broke two of his own commandments: "You shall not commit adultery" and "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife".
Once again, God forces his people to commit the same sins that he himself condemns.
Seriously? The other translations say "seizes her and lies with her" and "lay hold on her". Only by being willfully ignorant could one not interpret that as rape. I knew you were going to make this difficult on me with semantics, which is why i didn't want to get into this in the first place, but come on man.
How do you honestly read the original passage and get this out of it...?
That the bible is a god-awful philosophy book to live your life by. Whether god commanded anybody or not is beside the point. The point is that this book is a vile account of bronze-age troglodytes instead of a "perfect holy book from the creator of the universe". Not something that I'd ever teach my kids.
Guess you're going to make me continue then.
"When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house. [....] However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion."
Here God approves of forcibly taking other women, and basically treating them as property.
"For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. " Zechariah 14:2
God yet again approves of rape & genocide. I'm waiting for your reply where it turns out that other translations do not use the word "ravished". <_<
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. Numbers 31:15-18
It is said that the test of morality of any nation is in how it treats its prisoners of war. God treats his prisoners by slaughtering children & allowing the women to be raped.
When I hear a theist say "I did my homework" I think of a drug addict saying "no, I'm clean this time, for real".
Superior to paganism? Jesus is a blatant ripoff of Mithra.
The ends of the earth eh?
Guess you and me have a totally different definition of "perfectly accurate". Again, your religion is not automatically better than any others' on that pie chart.
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Sigh. 5000 years ago = 3000 BC.
Here are some trusty creationist websites since verifying this date has to be so hard:
http://www.creationtips.com/flooddate.html
http://www.deusdiapente.net/science/flood.php
You just gave me a passage from wikipedia which states that genesis was ripped off the epic of gilgamesh. -_-
The fact that you believe the Epic of Gilgamesh is a myth yet still want to use it as a reference is like saying "You can call Harry Potter a myth if you want, but you can't prove that people in the early 2000s had no record of Harry Potter defeating the evil wizard Lord Voldemort."
Even if there is evidence for Gilgamesh, it really doesn't matter because the surviving evidence from the dawn of civilization is pretty shoddy and does little to help us separate myth from historical fact. The fact remains that archaeological evidence does not point to any large flood which wiped out all of humanity. If a flood did happen it would have been recorded in far more places than in a book that amounts to a bedtime story.
Yes, in all likelyhood the man named Jesus existed. He was an Arab, not a white man with long hair. Here is just some food for thought:
Again, I'm not a bible/zoroastrian scholar, and I'm sure some of these are exaggerations/errors, but that doesn't invalidate all of the similarities between the two figures. Though if you really did your homework as you claim, you'd already know the bible was tampered with.
Yes I'm positive. Science is not wrong. But there is no way you can conclude that there was a global flood from these results. Whether the misrepresentation is occurring in the creationist that transcribed the article to this obviously-biased website, or whether its in the reader's digest article itself, or whether its in the geologist who is out to prove the Noah myth, there is undoubtedly some misrepresentation going on somewhere. If there was really a global flood, more geologists would acknowledge it.
So with all that being said, have we established that the flood was a fictional event yet?
There could very well have been a massive local flood, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. There most definitely was not a global flood. At this point I could stake my life on it.
Out of curiosity, you do believe in evolution right?
So what you're saying is that the con-men who wrote the bible have a verse where they say that you're ignorant if you don't believe in the bible?
Make no mistake: discussing scripture is the last thing I want to do because it has zero applicable use in the real world, and again: batman vs. superman. But since you want it so badly, here we go again.
Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun." - 2 Samuel 12:11
God is angry because David killed Uriah. So as a punishment, God will have his innocent wives raped while everyone else watches. Typical pathetic bronze-age morals.
"If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her."(Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
What kind of nutjob makes a rape victim marry her attacker?
Judges:21
"They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, "Go and hide in the vineyards. When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife! And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, 'Please be understanding. Let them have your daughters, for we didn't find enough wives for them when we destroyed Jabesh-gilead. "
So here, the Israelites, continuing in their tradition of "do whatever the hell you want because we have divine authority & we're special", decided to kidnap women after slaughtering all the other women & children of Jabesh-gilead.
Everytime God says "But you may keep for yourselves all the women," I consider it to be rape by virtue of the fact that the women were stolen from their husbands and are now forced to procreate with their new captors. I already know you consider this to be a benevolent act where the Isrealites simply adopt new wives for which to care, so spare me your inevitable response.
So again you make my point by reiterating how superior your religion is. The primary contention between Jews & Christians as far as I understand it is whether Jesus was the messiah. This is not a small detail. Also, Jews don't believe in eternal suffering in hell (a ridiculous concept of justice).
You're an intelligent guy, and while religion makes normally intelligent people say some stupid things, I hope you can at least see the arrogance of claiming that your religion is better than all others. If God actually cared what you believe, why do other religions even exist? As far as I'm concerned, they all have the same non-evidence for their existence, and the fact that there are even other options to Christianity is the most damning proof that it's not so special.
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The biblical chronology puts the flood at 2345 BC, so again, my point is made. The tombs dated from the time of the flood have no evidence of flooding either.
The epic of Gilgamesh is a myth. The flood was said to have occured in the early dynastic period. Here is a sample of the history from this period:
"The main part of the third millennium, now called the Early Dynastic period, saw the gradual development of Sumerian civilization, based on numerous city states. From the Early Dynastic period comes the earliest Sumerian literature, including the epic poetry about Gilgamesh. The Sumerians lived in a complex, unpredictable and frequently hostile environment. They had to contend with floods, droughts, storms, dust, heat, disease and death. They strove to uncover order and organization in the world to overcome feelings of futility and powerlessness. "
No mention of a global flood, and no mention of something as important as humanity being wiped out.
There are more differences in the flood myths than similarities by virtue of the fact that the myth is reinvented by every culture. But people also independently came up with the ideas that disease is caused by demons and that dragons existed, just like people all over the world claim to have seen aliens & UFOs. Whatever myths people independently created in ancient history do not give any extra weight to anything or mean anything.
The flood of Gilgamesh was written before 2000 B.C, and Genesis was written in 400 BC, so I fail to see how it's other religions that are doing the plagiarizing. You need to start considering the fact that your religion has some serious elements of plagiarism, like that Jesus is basically a copy of Mithra.
Couple things:
1) This proves that there was a flood in the Gulf of Mexico, not the entire planet. If you want to prove a global flood, it has to be in all the ice cores, and it's not in the Greenland ice cores.
2) Noah's flood was not 10000 years ago, therefore this can all be dismissed right off the bat.
3) I find it funny that you dismissed my sources as "biased", even though I haven't seen you get your info from anywhere else besides creationist websites. Here is the one that you copy/pasted your latest info from: http://www.earthage.org/floodevidences/more_flood_evidences.htm
Aside from the fact that the info comes from a Reader's Digest article (not the most prestigious of scientific journals), it's the front page of the site that bothers me the most. Seriously. Here is their understanding of evolution:
or
facepalm
I fail to see why. Theists make factual statement about physical reality and so far they're the only ones that can't seem to move on after their theories are discredited. When people deny core scientific frameworks like evolution, it starts to become a problem.
That's because the ancient world had plenty of floods, some of them serious ones at that. Theists misrepresent whatever evidence they can find for any flood because they don't actually care about geology & science. The only time theists care about science is when they're trying to find proof for their already pre-determined conclusions. Obviously not all theists, but still.
Just give it a rest dude. I've heard every excuse for genocide imaginable by now.
That's fantastic, but we're not talking about Sodom & Gomorrah, so it's not a very good answer.
I...never said it was the main reason. In fact I said "justifications", as in, plural. But thanks for conceding the point I guess? <_<
I used to be a Christian, and it's not difficult to cherrypick the meaning or translation to justify pretty much any passage you want. I won't be making any more assumptions about the bible because Tolkfan was pretty much right, debating this book is like debating batman vs. superman. It seems that you've already made up your mind that the bible "is the most perfect & historically accurate book ever" so there's nothing else to discuss. But at least I can learn some more about geology.
Christians: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Jews: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Sikhs: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Hindus: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Muslims: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
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^-awesome
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Basically all I'm saying.
No dude. All BCs in SC2 use the same model for story-mode & for in-game. If we go by your theory that the story mode Hyperion model is supposed to represent only a behemoth, then that means we saw exactly zero minotaurs in the entire game's story mode. It would mean that both Mengsk & Warfield fly around in outdated battlecruiser models.
The Hyperion story-mode model doesn't even look remotely like a behemoth. Look at the Hyperion & the giant circle on its back wings, and look at the old behemoths in the sclegacy comparison picture. Even if your theory was true, you'd still have it backwards.