How the term "Creationist" has been hijacked

[Raithie]

excellent so what your saying is that your mean to believe it even though it contradicts what he is?

It doesn't contradict Santa. Santa is said to work and remain unnoticed through magic.

If it does, I can conveniently say that it is "not my personal understanding of Santa" because I have had "personal experiences".

ok this is complete biblical ignorance, that verse from the very beginning has been shown to be the fact that both him and us both have a spirit and that we show his likeness in that way, but you tried your best.

Could you back that up? Or is that your own personal understanding?
Anyway, the point I was making was that my unicorn has some similar properties to unicorns of legend, except, he's godly.

we arnt talking about that we are talking about Christianity, and no tehy dont some denominations spearated over hats for goodness sakes! the reason we have a tendance to seperate is mixed in the protestant histroy, but if you look into it, we seperated over triffle things, please look into my religion more before you make such a misinformed statement.

There are bigger differences than a choice of hats. The only point that I was making was that it's all down to interpretation - hence my interpretation of unicorns.

again this statement can only be from your ignorance of christianity. like ive said above we have never taken that statement to mean physical similarities.
ecellent so you have understood that there isnt a lephrecaun on your shoulder, excellent so your statement is refuted.

Good grief. Nope, I still firmly believe that the leprechaun is there because when I cross my arms and talk to him, he talks back and tells me that he is on my shoulder and looks like a leprechaun. I also get a kind of aura and I just feel that he is a leprechaun. It's all personal experience, you see.

ahhh look at that precious underlining adorable!

sorry I should be nice but as ive said your initial statement of the leprechan has been proven false.

this was your claim

"I can claim the existence of a tiny leprechaun that sits on my shoulder everyday"

you then retreated from your point saying that he was merely in the FORm of your statement therefore disproving your initial statement.

so in other words you can disporve such entities, ultimately the God concept especailly when it comes to religion can be pushed back until ultimately it is not the God of the bible, koran etc, just like your "leprechan".

such arguements are only used on the popular level because quite frankly they are immature and silly, we dont deny the possiblity of their being gold on pluto because of lack of evidence but because some athiests want to be lazy they make such silly statements.

I underlined it because you keep missing the point.
I didn't withdraw my point. I simply explained it further by involving personal experiences, prayer and described his unproveable nature.

You did not disprove anything of what I said. You told me that my belief was not valid because it wasn't according to legend and then continued to explain to me what I believed in.

My belief is an interpretation based on personal experience. The legends are metaphorical. My versions of unicorns and leprechauns (gods) are immaterial and can never be observed, unless they decide to, but they probably won't because they love when people rely on faith instead of evidence. They tell me these things when I cross my arms and tell me that people like you, who don't believe in them, will burn forever in a fiery pit, and people that confess their belief will live happily ever after in a wonderful place. They also tell me that I must live a good life and brush my teeth everyday.

There. I just created my own little religion.

You define your God as unproveable and then expect atheists to be able to disprove him. That's just silly. If you can apply that logic, then I can apply this "unproveable" part to whatever I want, too. And when I do, it's impossible to disprove because I can waffle further about "personal understanding", "interpretation", "personal experiences" and his simple unproveable nature.

That's all I'm trying to say.

 

[tarasan]

It doesn't contradict Santa. Santa is said to work and remain unnoticed through magic.

If it does, I can conveniently say that it is "not my personal understanding of Santa" because I have had "personal experiences".

ahhh another misrepresentation of Christianity personal experiences should be verified through scripture not the other way around.

Could you back that up? Or is that your own personal understanding?
Anyway, the point I was making was that my unicorn has some similar properties to unicorns of legend, except, he's godly.

no Its all about biblical interpretation, when we interpret a certain text we have a rule and that is that we start with the more clear texts, for example "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24) this text is very clear about what God is with teh text your saying was definately open to interpretation. so with verses like John 4 24 we understand that we were created with a spirit which is how we are in Gods image.

and again Unicorns arnt Gods, also to possess some of hte attributes of God e.g. creation of the universe he has to be spaceless and timeless and omnipotient do you agree?

There are bigger differences than a choice of hats. The only point that I was making was that it's all down to interpretation - hence my interpretation of unicorns.

the biggest different is calvinism/arminism and again that is a very secondary debate, and even so interpretation can only go so far. your definition of a unicorn goes so far outside what it is that its absurd.

Good grief. Nope, I still firmly believe that the leprechaun is there because when I cross my arms and talk to him, he talks back and tells me that he is on my shoulder and looks like a leprechaun. I also get a kind of aura and I just feel that he is a leprechaun. It's all personal experience, you see.

no personal experiences have to backed up with something solid in the Christian sense its scripture, although you have just went back on what you said about being a FORM of something, you seem to be chopping and changing quite alot.

I underlined it because you keep missing the point.
I didn't withdraw my point. I simply explained it further by involving personal experiences, prayer and described his unproveable nature.

You did not disprove anything of what I said. You told me that my belief was not valid because it wasn't according to legend and then continued to explain to me what I believed in.

My belief is an interpretation based on personal experience. The legends are metaphorical. My versions of unicorns and leprechauns (gods) are immaterial and can never be observed, unless they decide to, but they probably won't because they love when people rely on faith instead of evidence. They tell me these things when I cross my arms and tell me that people like you, who don't believe in them, will burn forever in a fiery pit, and people that confess their belief will live happily ever after in a wonderful place. They also tell me that I must live a good life and brush my teeth everyday.

There. I just created my own little religion.

You define your God as unproveable and then expect atheists to be able to disprove him. That's just silly. If you can apply that logic, then I can apply this "unproveable" part to whatever I want, too. And when I do, it's impossible to disprove because I can waffle further about "personal understanding", "interpretation", "personal experiences" and his simple unproveable nature.

That's all I'm trying to say.

first point no your misinterpretting religious personnel experience, if a christian has an experience it always has to be backed up with something from the bible, so in your sense you couldnt just ignore the legends as your doing. again you need good reason to beleive they are metaphorical, are all the legends poetic? songs? parables? if you think what your saying represents Christianity i beg you to review. Our personnel expereinces are checked with teh bible to remain consistant.

our interpretations are reviewed by either our congregation or for theologians acedemia. you show no kind of safety checks for your religion.

the last paragraph was the kicker,

of course you can disprove god, you can disprove God if he is illogical since illogical things cannot exist.

its just that you cannot merely dismiss him through lack of evidence, unless he didnt do anything he was supposed too.

and again I have good reason for your leprechans and unicrons, you ignore the legends that state what they do, you do not test your personnel experiences against the legends of lephrecons or unicorns, and your beleifs arnt peer reviewed. there are plenty of reasons why I should discount your theories got any for mine?

 

[DeitySlayer]

I believe in an omnimax Flying Spaghetti Monster who created the Universe. He was drunk when he created it, hence the imperfections. Disprove that.

 

[Copernicus]

im going to ignore everything about santa and go for this point, and will go ahead and ask you to state the evidence that we would expect to see the biblical God doing, and which he isnt doing.

That's a tall order, as the "biblical God" is hardly a coherently defined entity. Rather it is a composite of many different human conceptions of God. Nevertheless, here is a list of phenomena we might expect to observe, if the Abrahamic "omnimax" God existed. This list contains some items that have troubled theologians, because they have spent centuries trying to justify belief in God, despite the absence of evidence that we might reasonably expect.

1. God would make his presence unambiguous and obvious.
2. People who prayed to God and were religious would seem luckier and better off than they actually are in comparison to those who pray to false gods or to none at all.
3. We would find evidence that a worldwide Flood actually did take place historically (the Noah legend).
4. Evil and suffering would disappear from the world. (The existence of evil and suffering is never actually explained in the Bible.)
5. Scientists would be able to verify miracles--contraventions of natural law brought about by supernatural beings. (Likewise, if Santa existed, we would expect some poor kids to mysteriously receive toys on Christmas that their parents could not or would not buy. That would be evidence of a Santa-originated "miracle".)
6. God would ensure that knowledge of his existence sprang up in geographic locations that were isolated from the Jewish tradition. (It is never clear in the Bible what is so special about the Jewish people that God would treat them as special.)

(I could go on, but it is fairly useless to try to identify evidence for the existence of a being that the Bible defines inconsistently as ignorant of human behavior on some pages and omniscient on others.)

What evidence for God should we find?

A sampling is provided above.

Only if one's God concept is an infantile Superman.

I believe that Tarasan's "Biblical God" falls into this classification. However, you can stretch definitions in many different directions. When you end up defining God as a bowl of ice cream, I will agree that he exists in many places in the world, although he doesn't make his existence apparent for long.

Though I'm not a theist, I admit I could be wrong as the matter is unprovable. I think the problem is that proper scientific study requires a superior position, an element of control. We don't have that with God, and probably never will.

Scientists have control over their experiments, not the phenomena they study. In the case of God, one should be able to amass empirical data on his existence, since he interacts with the physical universe.

 

[Raithie]

ahhh another misrepresentation of Christianity personal experiences should be verified through scripture not the other way around.



no Its all about biblical interpretation, when we interpret a certain text we have a rule and that is that we start with the more clear texts, for example "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24) this text is very clear about what God is with teh text your saying was definately open to interpretation. so with verses like John 4 24 we understand that we were created with a spirit which is how we are in Gods image.

and again Unicorns arnt Gods, also to possess some of hte attributes of God e.g. creation of the universe he has to be spaceless and timeless and omnipotient do you agree?



the biggest different is calvinism/arminism and again that is a very secondary debate, and even so interpretation can only go so far. your definition of a unicorn goes so far outside what it is that its absurd.



no personal experiences have to backed up with something solid in the Christian sense its scripture, although you have just went back on what you said about being a FORM of something, you seem to be chopping and changing quite alot.



first point no your misinterpretting religious personnel experience, if a christian has an experience it always has to be backed up with something from the bible, so in your sense you couldnt just ignore the legends as your doing. again you need good reason to beleive they are metaphorical, are all the legends poetic? songs? parables? if you think what your saying represents Christianity i beg you to review. Our personnel expereinces are checked with teh bible to remain consistant.

our interpretations are reviewed by either our congregation or for theologians acedemia. you show no kind of safety checks for your religion.

the last paragraph was the kicker,

of course you can disprove god, you can disprove God if he is illogical since illogical things cannot exist.

its just that you cannot merely dismiss him through lack of evidence, unless he didnt do anything he was supposed too.

and again I have good reason for your leprechans and unicrons, you ignore the legends that state what they do, you do not test your personnel experiences against the legends of lephrecons or unicorns, and your beleifs arnt peer reviewed. there are plenty of reasons why I should discount your theories got any for mine?

This is boring me. You keep missing the point.

If I was to go back to your original point about how "normal" unicorns should leave behind traces etc., well that is not always the case. Things don't always fossilize. There will be many species that we will never know of because they didn't fossilize or leave behind evidence. So you actually can't disprove their existence, you can only doubt it and not believe in them.

The reason why I started to talk about "my" version of timeless, spaceless, omnipotent unicorns was to equate them to God, since these things are supernatural and conveniently make God exempt from direct disproof. Given the complete lack of evidence, and knowing the potential humans have for creating imaginative tales, I can safely presume that there is no God or unicorn, or atleast not believe in such beings.

You tried to renounce "my version" of unicorns by telling me they go against legend. I have heard numerous completely different and even contradictory tales about mythical, magical unicorns. I could easily grasp on to one these and claim them to be true, since they can't be disproven, only doubted, and claim that I have had a "personal experience". You tried to state that personal experience must be verified through scripture. You can interpet the bible in pretty much any way you want. Hence all the denominations etc. "Personal experiences" are not checked with the Bible. People experience things. Brains are capable of making up funny things. People lie. After the supposed "experience" happened, people don't go running off to check with the Bible. They call it a "personal experience" and hold it as "evidence" of their beliefs.

You also tell me that I have to have "good reason to believe that [my unicorns] are metaphorical". Well, I could do what most Christians do and pick and choose from the legends. For example, most Chirstians don't accept eternal damnation in Hell , that homosexuals / liars / people who work on the sabbath day deserve to die or that God created the earth in 7 days. They are not described in anyway as metaphorical in the Bible.

I am reasonably confident that absolutely no evidence would change your belief in God. That is where we differ. There are numerous things that would make me believe in God. I go by evidence, you go by unfounded faith. There is the same amount of evidence for unicorns existence and God.

Also, "peer review"? You mean other Christians of the same beliefs and assumptions about supernatural, magical beings?

Ofcourse, I could always claim a celestial teapot / the flying spaghetti monster created the universe.

 

[DeitySlayer]

Ofcourse, I could always claim a celestial teapot / the flying spaghetti monster created the universe.

Correction. Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe but we have no evidence for his Noodly Existence apart from a contradictory book which was written 2,000 years ago; and every so often, by reading through it, we find some piece of meaning by jumbling up the words and phrases; and that's how he speaks to us.

 

[FlyingTeaPot]

I think the loch ness monster created the universe. Disprove that tarasan.

 

[Storm]

I didn't mean to limit the discussion to the God of Christianity, but I can use that example as easily as another.

1. God would make his presence unambiguous and obvious.

I agree that the Biblical God SHOULD do this, what with the whole damnation thing. However, there's no reason why He must, especially if the theologians are right in that He prizes blind faith.

2. People who prayed to God and were religious would seem luckier and better off than they actually are in comparison to those who pray to false gods or to none at all.

This one, I'll grant you.

3.We would find evidence that a worldwide Flood actually did take place historically (the Noah legend).

Only if Literalism was the correct theory of Biblical interpretation, which I absolutely reject.

4. Evil and suffering would disappear from the world. (The existence of evil and suffering is never actually explained in the Bible.)

Why? Obviously, God saw a purpose to them, or He wouldn't have created them in the first place.

5. Scientists would be able to verify miracles--contraventions of natural law brought about by supernatural beings. (Likewise, if Santa existed, we would expect some poor kids to mysteriously receive toys on Christmas that their parents could not or would not buy. That would be evidence of a Santa-originated "miracle".)

Maybe. If God prizes blind faith as much as some Christians think He does, Hebe just as likely to hide His handiwork.

I've never understood the notion that a being who can do virtually anything would be easily detected.

6. God would ensure that knowledge of his existence sprang up in geographic locations that were isolated from the Jewish tradition. (It is never clear in the Bible what is so special about the Jewish people that God would treat them as special.)

OK, that's a good one. And one of many reasons I don't believe in this God.

(I could go on, but it is fairly useless to try to identify evidence for the existence of a being that the Bible defines inconsistently as ignorant of human behavior on some pages and omniscient on others.)

I believe that Tarasan's "Biblical God" falls into this classification. However, you can stretch definitions in many different directions. When you end up defining God as a bowl of ice cream, I will agree that he exists in many places in the world, although he doesn't make his existence apparent for long.

LOL!

I agree that some definitions of God are pretty worthless. And some have more evidence against them than others. However, I still don't think that any functional God-concept can be disproven.

Scientists have control over their experiments, not the phenomena they study.

Well, yes. That's what I meant. I still stand by my point.

In the case of God, one should be able to amass empirical data on his existence, since he interacts with the physical universe.

Maybe. It just seems like too easy an assumption to me.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

Lack of factual evidence to support anything remotely like creation?

The completely fantasy-like nature of a God making everything?

Creation just seems lazy.

So you do not believe in causality?

 

[DeitySlayer]

So you do not believe in causality?

Define causality.

 

[tarasan]

This is boring me. You keep missing the point.

If I was to go back to your original point about how "normal" unicorns should leave behind traces etc., well that is not always the case. Things don't always fossilize. There will be many species that we will never know of because they didn't fossilize or leave behind evidence. So you actually can't disprove their existence, you can only doubt it and not believe in them.

The reason why I started to talk about "my" version of timeless, spaceless, omnipotent unicorns was to equate them to God, since these things are supernatural and conveniently make God exempt from direct disproof. Given the complete lack of evidence, and knowing the potential humans have for creating imaginative tales, I can safely presume that there is no God or unicorn, or atleast not believe in such beings.

You tried to renounce "my version" of unicorns by telling me they go against legend. I have heard numerous completely different and even contradictory tales about mythical, magical unicorns. I could easily grasp on to one these and claim them to be true, since they can't be disproven, only doubted, and claim that I have had a "personal experience". You tried to state that personal experience must be verified through scripture. You can interpet the bible in pretty much any way you want. Hence all the denominations etc. "Personal experiences" are not checked with the Bible. People experience things. Brains are capable of making up funny things. People lie. After the supposed "experience" happened, people don't go running off to check with the Bible. They call it a "personal experience" and hold it as "evidence" of their beliefs.

You also tell me that I have to have "good reason to believe that [my unicorns] are metaphorical". Well, I could do what most Christians do and pick and choose from the legends. For example, most Chirstians don't accept eternal damnation in Hell , that homosexuals / liars / people who work on the sabbath day deserve to die or that God created the earth in 7 days. They are not described in anyway as metaphorical in the Bible.

I am reasonably confident that absolutely no evidence would change your belief in God. That is where we differ. There are numerous things that would make me believe in God. I go by evidence, you go by unfounded faith. There is the same amount of evidence for unicorns existence and God.

Also, "peer review"? You mean other Christians of the same beliefs and assumptions about supernatural, magical beings?

Ofcourse, I could always claim a celestial teapot / the flying spaghetti monster created the universe.

no just because someone is disagreeing with your point doesnt mean he isnt getting it just means he disagrees.

firstly ill take your personnel experience malarcy, and of course they do, there are plenty of people who have believed they have gotten messages from God checked the bible and saw it doesnt fit and pass it off as unfounded, that was very presumptious of you.

in the unicorns yes I can disprove them firstly because they were meant to be around in medievil times, people would "buy" unicron horns that were gotten from other animals, its not like they are ancheint like dinosaurs.

and no you cant interpret the bible pretty much any way you want more speculation, proper interpretation requires alot of reading into the jewish past as well as language and such.

also taken within the context of christianity it is definately peer reviewed, people right papers on doctrine, interpretation etc, and it is criticed by others kinda like in philosphy.

eternal suffering in hell was mostly stated in revelation........ which is an aptiliptic book..... which is ALL metaphor
also there has been alot of breakthrough in homosexuality language wise so i would check into that before you spout something like that...

and lots of gensis has been described meathorically because its poetry, we only really started taking it seriously 300 years ago when fundamentalism was rife, heck in 300 AD siant Augustine stated that the creation story shouldnt be taken literally 1500 years before darwin

also interesting paragraph

"I am reasonably confident that absolutely no evidence would change your belief in God. That is where we differ. There are numerous things that would make me believe in God. I go by evidence, you go by unfounded faith. There is the same amount of evidence for unicorns existence and God."

how persumptiosu and narrow minded is this statement eh? you have no idea who i am what i beleive or know and yet you make THIS statement. ill let it pass cause your only 16 but please try and grow up and realise that just because someone doesnt have the same beliefs as you that doesnt mean they havnt thought through their faith...

your right this is starting to bore me clear you dont know much about my religion at all, i mean some of the things youve come out with is incredible.....

 

[tarasan]

I believe in an omnimax Flying Spaghetti Monster who created the Universe. He was drunk when he created it, hence the imperfections. Disprove that.

sure material beings cannot create a world of matter because where did their matter come from before the world of matter was made?

its illogical

 

[tarasan]

That's a tall order, as the "biblical God" is hardly a coherently defined entity. Rather it is a composite of many different human conceptions of God. Nevertheless, here is a list of phenomena we might expect to observe, if the Abrahamic "omnimax" God existed. This list contains some items that have troubled theologians, because they have spent centuries trying to justify belief in God, despite the absence of evidence that we might reasonably expect.

1. God would make his presence unambiguous and obvious.
2. People who prayed to God and were religious would seem luckier and better off than they actually are in comparison to those who pray to false gods or to none at all.
3. We would find evidence that a worldwide Flood actually did take place historically (the Noah legend).
4. Evil and suffering would disappear from the world. (The existence of evil and suffering is never actually explained in the Bible.)
5. Scientists would be able to verify miracles--contraventions of natural law brought about by supernatural beings. (Likewise, if Santa existed, we would expect some poor kids to mysteriously receive toys on Christmas that their parents could not or would not buy. That would be evidence of a Santa-originated "miracle".)
6. God would ensure that knowledge of his existence sprang up in geographic locations that were isolated from the Jewish tradition. (It is never clear in the Bible what is so special about the Jewish people that God would treat them as special.)

(I could go on, but it is fairly useless to try to identify evidence for the existence of a being that the Bible defines inconsistently as ignorant of human behavior on some pages and omniscient on others.)

firslty to your ending paragraph i think i know the verses your thinking of and i think you should read into jewish experessions of the time....

1. this is silly clearly the God of the bible doesnt want to be fully seen.
2. this isnt seen in the bible look at the story of job, and even so God may not answer the prayers the way the people want to, he isnt tied down to what we want.
3. bible literalists do not make up, a large proportion of christian and they only did for about 300 years. not exactly a very long lasting kind of interpretation.
4. why would evil and suffering disappear clearly the God of the bible permitts them at least in the bible.
5.miracles are incredibly rare things even in biblical times they were increibly rare at least the kind of miracles I think your after aka pillar of fire etc.
6. the first shall be last and the last shall be first. ring a bell? God consistanly uses weak things in the bible for great things, so that no one can boast that they themselves did it. its a very popular theme.

these question were silly heck im certain every kind of christian would be able to answer them hands down

 

[DeitySlayer]

sure material beings cannot create a world of matter because where did their matter come from before the world of matter was made?

its illogical

He's not a material being. He's transcendent like God. He was always there. But spaghetti, the greatest food of all time is made in his image.

 

[tarasan]

He's not a material being. He's transcendent like God. He was always there. But spaghetti, the greatest food of all time is made in his image.

so he isnt made of spegetti or isnt he ohhh and hte only way god can be transcendant is if he is immaterial. which means he isnt made out of spegetti.... whihc means he isnt a speggetti monster.

 

[painted wolf]

You miss the point... spaghetti is named in honor of the FSM... FSM can not be fully comprehended in all his noodly-goodness.

wa:do

 

[tarasan]

You miss the point... spaghetti is named in honor of the FSM... FSM can not be fully comprehended in all his noodly-goodness.

wa:do

what do you mean though is he a materialess being or what?

 

[Autodidact]

If the God described in the New Testament were real, the prayers of Christians would be answered. The prayers of Christians are not answered at any rate higher than random chance. Therefore the God of the New Testament does not exist.

 

[tarasan]

If the God described in the New Testament were real, the prayers of Christians would be answered. The prayers of Christians are not answered at any rate higher than random chance. Therefore the God of the New Testament does not exist.

where does it say in the bible he will answer any question and where does it say he will answer it the way we wanted?

 

[painted wolf]

what do you mean though is he a materialess being or what?

As much as any deity.

wa:do