Is it not disingenuous to require full and complete answers to these questions when science is unable to provide full and complete answers to basic theories.

On the basis of your requirement should you not demand full and complete answers to all questions about evolution before you believe it?

The lack of evidence is indeed not my fault because there is no lack of evidence there is only the lack of evidence which you or Interbane will accept. In that vein, I have repeatedly asked what evidence would be acceptable only to receive either no or vague answers which allow anything proposed to be rejected.

Those theories are backed up by facts and (as a bonus) are confirmed by real world natural laws that I can personally witness.



First of all there is a plethora of physical evidence supporting evolution, nothing like that exist for the biblical stories.

Despite this… and this is important… if the theory of evolution were to change today… I could accept it provided the right evidence… my personal world view is not dependant on the theory of evolution… my belief in the theory is dependent on the evidence however.

You know the physical evidence exists… you rile against it… but you deny it... not because it does not exist... and not because it makes no sense… but simply because it conflicts with what you have already accepted... which, in comparison, has no foundation at all.

I, on the other hand, am not denying your evidence… I see none that is actually credible… I t has been considered and it has all been solidly refuted by me and by others long before I ever entered the picture, but most importantly it has been refuted by the natural world that I experience day to day.

If you could give me good reasons as to why you believe things like…

A guy rose from the dead three days after being crucified.
or why you believe that at one time all men only thought evil things.
or why you believe that a snake can talk.
or why you believe that a holy spirit (whatever that is) can make a woman pregnant.

If you could give decent, rational reasons for believing these specific things I would entertain them better, but you cannot even do that… nobody can…

Ask yourself this… What have you seen in the real world during your lifetime that makes you think these things are even remotely possible?

You know… something else that IS provable... anything credible that supports the possibility of the fantastic stories from the bible...



If by that you mean that bad evidence still counts I disagree... All the “evidence” provided by you and a great many others fails when the spotlight of reason is cast upon it… a large amount of your evidence is really just excuses for not really having any... the vast majority of the rest of the claims are backed up only by scripture and scripture is backed up by almost nothing...

The few things that are backed up are mundane and ordinary and also accepted by myself and interbane.



This is not true… I have laid out several specific criteria and gave examples of historic people and events that I do accept on such evidence… (I will dig them out of the archives if you wish) I also explained that those criteria are not mine alone… they are the standards of all science and other intellectual fields… including archeology. Which is why people like Caesar are considered historical and Jesus and Hercules are not.

The reason you repeat yourself is because you refuse to accept the common standards of evidence, not because they have not been provided.

Later

I want to add something here… this is not about what I believe… I am a rational person and when confronted with a rational argument I will (at the very least) consider it… if evolution were to be disproved tomorrow and the evidence were determined to be valid I could accept it… I have no emotional stock tied up in that theory… it is simply the best model possible considering the massive amounts of evidence acquired to date... I trust this because it makes sence based off ALL of the evidence.

For hundreds of years early scientists tried in vain to verify their biblical beliefs… they were forced by the evidence and by the practicality of the new information to seek other alternatives because the biblical timeline and stories were simply not panning out to be accurate.

At any rate… this is about what you believe and why you believe it… but when given the opportunity to reveal your position in a rational way for all to see (not just me) you instead essentially say… nothing will convince you.

I am currently convinced that evolution is correct based off of the massive amounts of evidence, but as I said, another theory that reinterprets that evidence (not dismisses it… or makes unsupported claims against it) or has better evidence, could sway me… are you offering such a theory?

Or are you asking me to trust a book that says that snakes talk?

Later

It's not only the two of us. It's the entire intellectual community. We've been over this a thousand times, you present two or three items that wouldn't convince even yourself(if you were being objective), and you also fail to supply the claim that the evidence supports. It's an endless blame game with you, but I hope by now you realize your words aren't going to shoehorn reality to fit what you believe. You've supplied zero evidence that supports the supernatural claims within the bible. For an entire worldview, I'd expect a few hundred pieces of evidence before even devoting the time to consider it.

I missed this post initially, but here we go…

I am not rejecting it arbitrarily; real world facts discredit it thoroughly.




Well since I do not believe in sin… I would say that everyone is free of living in “sin”.

However, according to the definition since it is dependent on the religion and its adherents and simply knowing that you are violating their beliefs (whether or not you actually ascribe to them seems to be irrelevant) than only the people separated from other religions and the ones that die before they learn about religions and their dogma live outside of sin.

According to the definition there are people free of sin though.

But this is all irrelevant… why do you believe? is the question… please explain why you believe god made a man out of mud despite the fact that we have evidence to the contrary? How is it that you accept the idea of an evil talking snake? These questions need answering… and I am not asking what the bible says I am asking why you stahrwe believe it.

And here’s me on the absurd morality of sam harris…

What comes across in this clip is that sam harris is no atheist. His polemic tirades (even when cloaked in his ‘sam-ese’ sober, reflective, even ‘apologetic’ manner) against God give him away. He is a God-hater, with an ax to grind, and a following to gain of all those who like him are not so much convinced that there is no god, as that there is a God out there who is not taking pain away or yielding to their tirades… It’s maddening isn’t it?

Christians and non-Christians alike live in a world that knows pain, tragedy, natural disasters and unanswered questions. It is not the existence of God that sam calls into question, but the goodness of God. This is nothing new (See the garden story: Gen.1-3). Christians struggle here too. How can God be good and allow me (let alone all the children of the world) to suffer? Ironically, while blaming God for natural disasters, does sam consider thanking him for the rain that prevents drought? Why is God only responsible for what sam considers evil? Meanwhile God gives him life and breath and a mind able to concoct his allegations…this is at least as incomprehensible, (as ‘mysterious’) as any complaints sam makes.

My greatest concern with sam’s rhetoric is that people may actually fall for his suave speech and fail to recognize his agenda. Whether intentionally or as a mere pawn of a greater Evil, sam is following in the footsteps of those who masterminded the Holocaust—and long years before that the intense persecution of Christians under Nero—What are these steps? 1) Blame Christians (and their God) for evil in the world. 2) Slander them till they are not viewed as fully human 3) Sow seeds of fear that will justify their eradication as the only means of preserving ones own life and/or culture 4) Blaze a trail of mockery, desecration of all they hold sacred and justified hatred…

Sam is no atheist. He is a God-hater with an agenda to set himself up as a moral judge with the right to determine who should live and die…

As a take off on his own comments:
Oh the horror of (no, not religion but) man-made morality with no accountability, that allows otherwise sane people to defy all sense of reasonable faith and to determine their own categories of right and wrong…. These are the sorts of people that re-write the Bible to slander its author….in sam we see ‘the rather obvious evidence’ of his own desire to play God and invent morality…This is indeed morally reprehensible.

“I hate to break it to you but…” Christianity celebrates laying down your life for the ones you love. Love will always win ultimately over hate.

As for the narcissism of those who claim, "God loves me".
Can I give sam an ounce of credit for spying something here? What sam is seeing is a self-centeredness that permeates our culture, Christian and non-Christian alike. We take blessings and hug them to ourselves becoming egocentric. But it is not the fault of God's love.
God loves me and YOU, not so the love will end there in self-absorption and endless requests for more tokens of love, but so that I can be freed from my own love-hunger to love as I have been loved and so to extend the Kingdom of the God who is love impersonated.

This self-infatuation is just one of the characteristics of our times....

"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. ... always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. ... these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all..." (II Tim.3)

May we be mindful of the follies of our times and learn to love as God does, so helping to alleviate the suffering we decry as God's fault!

You may have actually gone beyond Stahrwe in sheer lunacy. Do you actually believe what you're saying?

I think she and I are not only on the same page but also the same measure.

so is Christianity, it is just evidendence of a different form.





ibid from my response above.



Of course I can't prove or disprove this and neither can you but I suspect you are much more invested than you claim.



I don't recall doing so. First of all, I read many claims but I don't think anyone has shown me any evidence. Show me hemoglobin systhesizing itself unaided. Or make a cell capable.



I think Mr. Spock once observed, "a difference which makes not difference, is no difference." In this case you try to elevate your prejudice until it appears to be objectivity, but no one is fooled least of all you.



What has; A talking snake, to use your example? Just because in your experience snakes don't talk is not proof that one didn't is it? If you recall, In Genesis 3, the Serpent, it wasn't referred to there as a snake, was changed wasn't it?



Once again, we look at the indirect evidence, the circumstantial evidence. We see what the Church was to yield as fruit and see that it did. We see a church which the combined effort of the most powerful government and most powerful religion at the time tried to unsuccessfully obliterate. We see changed lives, read Acts Chapter 15. Two groups of people who hated each other became intimately entwined by Christianity. That alone should be evidence that something 'remarkable' happened. Afterall the hardest thing to do is to get enemies to get along. You want evidence of the Holy Spirit acting? Right there.

I am going to have to leave the question ofhow Mary became preganant while remaining a virgin unanswered. I suppose the answer may become known to me but when and if it does, I thnk it will not be possible for me to tell you.



I have given decent, rational reasons: changed lives, enemies becoming friends, orphanages, schools, hospitals.... You want empirical reasons but fail to explain why an empirical reason is any better than what I have provided. Show me another group who has done what Christians have done for good in the world.




Are you kidding? My experience is not that 'remotely' does not enter in as a consideration but, and I can only speak fo rmyself, it is a very personal thing.




I look at the world and I see a world as I would expect it to be where the Bible was honored and I see a world as I would expect it to be in places where the Bible was not honored. The Bible world is not perfect but it has been consistently more progressive than the non-Bible world.





How? How does the building of orphanages, hospitals, universities, the development of legal systems, property rights, respect for life, how do any of these products of Christianity fail 'when the spotlight of reason [shines] upon it?' The society we have is built on the scriptures. Take away the Bible and what would Western 'civilization' be like? The Bible points forward to the civilization we have and the civilization points back to the Bible.



How generous of you. Nova's Bible's Buried Secrest proved that Solomon was real. If Solomon was rea, then David was real. If David was real, then Jessee was real; if Jessee was real Obed was real; if Obed was real ...

The world is not waiting for your or Interbane's imprimatur. I continue to challenge you to be rigorous in your challenges. The Atheist position of denying and using partial quotes and other distortions may work for awhile but in the end it will bring the whole argument down.





What I have seen is that eveytime a contemporary account is presented it is attacked as being a forgery by Christians. You start with the premise that the Bible is not reliable without justifiying that. Many of the authors of the NT were tortured and killed in unpleasant ways for their beliefs. They had nothing to gain from their position and yet they died testifying to what they had written. Why would they do that if it was all lies?



I repeat myself because the objections are all repeats.

Ok, name some


Nope, I really do not give a crap. However I will not accept a weaker theory over a more established one.


There is no deception… however not all evidence is created equal… furthermore credibility is not in the eye of the beholder… evidence must be scrutinized… what you claim as evidence does not hold up to observation of the world I have experienced my whole life… and I have experienced a lot… and this judgement is not just my opinion… under the rules of intellectual scrutiny your evidence fails yet again… logically it fails… and scientifically it fails.

Mr. Spock would not back you on this.


The burden of proof is on you, find me a talking snake and we can continue.


Serpant/snake/dragon/pink unicorn … it doesn’t matter… there is absolutely no evidence that any of that ever happened… and without evidence to back it up, your book looses credibility because it says that it did. Again this is not my rule but one of common sense.


Even giving you this (dispite the fact that it is all possible within the human sphere of actions without a god) how does this translate into a person returning from the grave?



Something remarkable did happen but it is completely explainable without a god, furthermore it could be argued that it was not all that good. However it still offers nothing to support a belief of the alleged events previously mentioned.

In what way does “something remarkable” happening address these specific beliefs?

A guy rose from the dead three days after being crucified.
at one time all men only thought evil things.
a snake (serpent) can talk.
a holy spirit (whatever that is) can make a woman pregnant.


Yet still possible without a god… or Holy Spirit… or gremlins… or whatever… only reasonable people tired of fighting need go to the table… and besides as two nations merge others become hostile… Christianity has done nothing to promote peace in this world.

All of this aside… and it was a noticed distraction… this still does not address the specific beliefs mentioned above in any way… it only addresses the topic discussed. It is not a rational reason to believe that “serpants” and donkeys talk, or that men rise from the grave.


So you have never seen anything that confirms the stories… yet you still believe them to be possible... ok.


So because a book has had great influence in some places people can come back to life, ghosts can impregnate women, men are made from mud and serpents can talk?

Is that right?


First of all most of those things you mention existed before the bible was ever written… hospitals… welfare for the poor… libraries and universities… legal systems… all existed in Rome before Christianity was ever even conceived and a great many of those things in this country are secular... meaning that Christianity is not necessary for them to exist.

Furthermore, as has been mentioned before… many times… those facts are irrelevant … totally irrelevant… to the specific events mentioned in the text… inspired people do many things but just because this book has inspired more people than all others does not mean that the events written within are true… and it certainly does not prove that god or Jesus were real.



First of al that is not "proved"… but even if it was, it only means that Solomon was real, those other people need separate evidence that speaks directly to their existence... confirming one person does not confirm a chain of people.


I am not quoting anything here, just asking for a reasonable answer as to why you believe snakes and donkeys can talk.



First and foremost, you have never given a contemporary source… Josephus (the earliest person to mention Jesus) was born to late to be considered contemporary his source is anonymous and it can only be considered as hearsay. And even if admitted only says that people believed that a guy named Jesus was followed (with a few other minor details) but it does nothing to confirm any level of divinity for the man.

So even if we accept the controversial (forgery) it is still rather useless in confirming a son of god… as already stated it would only support the idea that people of Josephus’ time believed it… which is not disputed.



Actually I started with no assumption, but reality justifies my current position… however I do not need to show anything, you are saying that the Bible is reliable... yours is the positive claim… you need to prove to me (and others) that you have a good foundation to believe the things you do… including the ridiculous stuff. By the way… saying that I cannot prove a serpent never talked is not proof that one did.


The writers are all (100%) anonymous… so this claim is bogus… many followers did die in that way, but people die for untrue ideas all the time… look at the Camping videos on this site right now, a woman tried to kill her kids and herself because she believed (wrongly) that the world would end… those actions do not speak to the truth of the text… only that they were believed to be true (wrongly)

Anyway… that was a valiant attempt to avoid a reasonable explanation to explain why you believe the ridiculous stuff in the bible… if that was the explanation it was a fail…

Later

What you think is evidence is NOT evidence Stahrwe, as agreed upon by the entire intellectual community. Remember, we atheists believe there is evidence supporting some of the claims(the mundane ones). The ridiculous claims are the ones in question. This one specifically, as an excellent example, should be enough to drive the point home:

You think pagans burn for eternity in a lake of fire. Nice claim. Show what evidence supports that claim...



This conversation is dead in the water, like every conversation before it, unless you specify what claims you're supporting. The claim that "two factions who hated each other became intimately intertwined" is the claim which is supported. I'll agree with that. However, to think the evidence supports the claim that "Christianity must be true because it motivated two opposing groups to make peace" is unquestionably false. The elephant in the room is the "impact" versus the "truthfulness", which are two distinctly different attributes. I doubt Frank would argue that Christianity has no impact. But you haven't given anything that supports even a single supernatural claim(your prophecy was worse hogwash than Camping's).

Oh Jeez, here we go again, the "hospitals and orphanages" argument. Why do we bother?

You don't, but I'll have a better answer tomorrow. Just checking in tonight for some light banter. I just spent the evening with a bunch of rowdy lawyers; lawyer jokes ugh.


What's the difference between lawyers and vampires?
Vampires only suck blood at night.

What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea?
A good start.

Why don't sharks attack lawyers?
Professional courtesy.