INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[SkepticThinker]

I will assume you wrote this before I posted the numbers (far greater than I claimed) for civil war sanitation deaths. I will not accept these claims of thin air from this post on. I got those numbers from an in-depth debate on homosexuality I had with a person as prolific and as wrong as you are about the issue and provided the numbers for that as well.

Well, I’m still going to ask for evidence whether you wish to accept the request or not. Sorry.

I read almost that entire discussion you are referring to, and the person you were arguing with rightly pointed out that you were making a case against promiscuity, rather than homosexuality itself.

If that is what I meant that is what I would have said. Please stop purposefully misstating what I claim. I specifically said the rates at which the diseases are passed is a result of the practice not that they invented aids. Aids came from scientific ignorance not sexual obscenity.

I’m sorry, but that’s what I take away from your posts. Especially when you imagine and assert that disease is punishment for evil behaviors and when you state that “the rate at which diseases are passed is a result of the practice,” which basically says as much. You’re saying that the rate at which disease is passed is a result of homosexuality. It isn’t. It’s the result of unsafe sex practices.

AIDS comes from scientific ignorance? I think I’ll have to ask you to elaborate on that one.

A wrong thing does not become right because you clothe it in dress that for one is a gross misrepresentation of things in general and also assume the dress remains static and that again is not the average case. Homosexuals are far more promiscuous than heterosexuals, (again because it is a much larger problem that homosexuality is only a symptom of)..

Men are more promiscuous than women in general. Whether they are homosexual or heterosexual. It’s not necessarily a gay problem or something.

How is that a gross misrepresentation of things or “not the average case?” I just have to ask, how many gay people do you know?

I am against a practice even if you find an example where it is less destructive. Stealing is not right because sometimes it looks just or sometimes it does not hurt anyone. The lengths secular folks go to excuse and explain away things so absolutely destructive is appalling. You quite literally compromise with immorality.

I don’t think homosexuality is destructive or unnatural. So I’m not explaining away anything.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

• Illustrated London News (23 October 1909)

??????????

This is getting way off track. I do not have to evaluate every single person or example where a certain practice is maintained. It is quite absurd to absolve Murder of wrongness even if you can find a case where the wrong is hard to find. That is like saying you can't call Osama Bin Laden or Sadam Hussein evil because at times they did good things. Besides I do not nor do I have the power to condemn people. I only condemn acts.

Why is it off track to discuss lesbians? They’re part of the homosexual community. You can’t go on at length about how destructive you think homosexuality is, all the while completely excluding lesbians from the equation.

That is absurd. Though I imagine that the absurd happens from time to time. I was a prayer counselor for years, I have read books and attended seminars on divorce counseling and nothing even remotely like this was ever taught or condoned. This is simply another slant and amplification for effect.

I agree, it is absurd. There is no slant or amplification here, I have heard this from more women than I ever imagined possible.

It was probably heard even more in the 1950s.

How many times do I have to claim I have nothing against birth control to get you to stop mentioning it. Customs are not changed or addressed by the supreme court, laws are. Laws are secular institutions.

I was just musing about how ridiculous it was that this had to even happen in the first place.

I’m glad you have nothing against birth control. You should rally your fellow Christians in the same direction.

No, I think that is a terrible idea. Where did you get this from?

I’m pretty sure that happened on this thread. But again, I don’t really feel like looking back through 105 pages to find it.

 

[SkepticThinker]

This is another secular distortion. The US was founded on Christian values and was made up of 85% plus Christians. Most of them had come from England which had incorporated the Church and oppressed any opposition and that is even why most came here. They did not want any government to dictate religion again and so set it up where the government was not allowed to condone any certain religion. It was not meant to be secular it was meant to be theologically free. As in most cases people now use those laws for purposes never intended and even insert things like "separation of Church and state" into places it does not exist.

The distortion is yours. Why is it that god, Christianity nor Christian values are mentioned anywhere in the American Constitution?

Your constitution and the men who wrote it were revolutionaries for the very fact that it was written the way it was. Yours is the first and only (so far) secularist and/or pluralistic society in history. The government is neutral on religion, as it should be.

I agree that no country is 100% secular but the closes are the atheistic utopias like Lennon's and Stalins Russia, or Mao's China a few years back, or Kim Jong Ills atheistic N Korea. Not a good track record at all. Stalin alone killed 20 million.

They don’t count either. Those men set up societies in which the state and its leaders were to be worshipped, which is really a religion in itself. For example, King Jong Il’s father is supposed to be considered the “eternal president” of the country even though he’s been dead for some time. In essence, he’s a deity. That is not atheism.

I said secularism not secularists on purpose. What country do you live in?

I live in Canada.

Currently my country claims at least to be about 80% Christian and few politicians would not claim to be one. However we now for the first time have openly atheist members of Congress, plus Muslims, etc.... What they are is not the issue anyway it is what they do?

I think there are maybe one of each. Big deal. I mean, good start, but really doesn’t amount to much, especially in comparison to the number that profess Christianity.

What is it that these mainly Christian members of Congress are doing that is so horribly secular in nature?

As bad as they are it is not them causing most of the damage it is secular groups like the ACLU who in the name of tolerance do not tolerate whatever they choose and the politicians no matter what they claim are in their pockets. Except for some of the deep south Christianity is under attack by the media in general. Add in the unions, gay activist groups, in fact just go to this site and count how many groups there are currently for the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_secularist_organizations
Every one I checked was post 1950.

The ACLU isn’t on even on that list.

Atheists are one of the most reviled minorities in the entire country.

I’ve never heard anyone assert that most members of Congress are in the pockets of secular organizations. That’s a new one. How do you justify that statement?

However the worse by far are the media and the academic community. As an apologist I have viewed the stats and at the majority of Universities at least one professor will attempt to counter faith whether it has any application to the class or not. The more liberal institutions like Berkley and Harvard relentlessly attack faith and the traditional institutions and beliefs that made the US of 1950 the greatest country in human history. Since secularism has taken over our no 1 position has been steadily eroding in almost every statistic yet the ones at fault will not even allow a problem to exist much less fix it. If something is not broken secular liberalism will fix it until it is.

Can I see these stats you speak of?

Anyone can say they’re the “greatest country in human history” and I bet you most people from most advanced nations would say the same about their own country of residence. It’s a completely subjective statement that doesn’t really mean much of anything. I’d rather live in my country than yours. I think we’re freer here. So what does that mean to you? Probably nothing. I’d say we’re more secular here too and yet we don’t have many of the problems you claim your country does.

I’d rather get to the root of each individual problem but I don’t think the path in that direction is simply “secularism.” That’s far too simplistic and doesn’t really speak to the in the depth they deserve.

 

[1robin]

1. I don’t think you’ve shown that at all. Look at the way you judge and belittle gay people or people who don’t conform to your “traditional” view of proper sexual behavior.

This is wrong to start with but has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. You said that old does not mean good (morally) I said you misunderstood. I did not mean that old is good but old was a description I used to indicate specifically Christian morality that existed in 1940-50 United States. What does that have to do with anything I said about gay people? It sure wasn't what you said anyway. I did not mention a single person that was gay. My comments have always been on the practice not the people. I could make the argument that gay rights parades are many times the most crude, rebellious, despicable events of any kind these days but I haven't. I am so naive that I have worked with two people that much later on I was told they were extremely gay and open about it yet it is so off my radar I did not even notice. I have never met a gay person I did not like. However I have seen many that I would not like gay or straight on the news. This is a false appeal to sympathy and is the well-known tactic of the PC crowd who have created more evil than they have avoided.

2. I don’t think we have morally regressed. And I think we are more moral than the people described in the Bible.

I have posted the stats that undeniably prove otherwise. If a person simply redefines morality as equal to opinion or preference then facts will not carry much weight. It is as if I said the sun is hot (at around 5,500C) and you reply that you see no evidence that the sun is hot and you think it made of ice. What can I do about that?
1950 compared to 2013
1. Drug abuse worse.
2. Teen pregnancy rates worse.
3. Gun crimes worse.
4. Mass shooting events, way worse. It is almost as if secularism is producing moral insanity.
5. Dropout rates, worse.
6. Educational standards verses the world, worse. Despite the fact secularists are throwing money at each student at a vastly higher rate than ever before.
7. Alcohol related crime, worse.
8. Broken families, way way worse.
This is just getting boring. Is there any statistic where we are more moral now that is not some PC rhetoric? Even if all the above were better now than then abortion would reverse everything anyway. You can't find anything that would even potentially rectify the murder of millions of Babies a year.

Since when do you get to decide where your tax dollars go? Are you equally upset about your tax dollars going toward treating lung cancer in smokers, or heart disease in obese people? Tough luck, I think.

What? Do you live in the US. The people who determine tax laws are elected officials. The secularists have elected liberal folks who think the government should raise us from the cradle and bear every burden including or intentional mistakes along the way. This attitude is destroying the greatest nation in human history and just like morality the results are just as obvious and the end just as undeniable and the head in the sand effect of those who are causing both is just as prevalent. I am trying to stay away from politics as much as possible as I think we have both given up on it.

It sounds like you have more of an issue with promiscuity than you do with actual homosexuality. African American males account for more than half of people living with AIDS in the US. So you should probably have the same problem with African Americans as you do with gay males in general. (If AIDS is in fact, what you’re talking about here.)

No, as I said long before you mentioned this Homosexuality is just a symptom of a much greater disease. Rebellion and sin are causing al of these problems. Yes I do believe this problem is greater in certain communities, but the causes are social not genetic, so race is not really a big factor. If it was I have no problem claiming it.

So you have no moral arguments against lesbians?

I have very little medical arguments against them. I oppose all of it on a theological basis but I try and give more secular than theological arguments (common ground). You gave an example of this well let me give you one.

That is a failing on the part of the soldiers who decided to shirk their duties because they didn’t want to fight alongside gay human beings. They don’t sound like very patriotic people to me; maybe the military is better off without them. How is it that the rest of the free world manages to get along just fine with both gay and straight soldiers serving together?

Spoken like a true atheist. Don't know them, do not even have any names of them, yet condemn them because they will not adopt what you wish. These were high ranking officers who had dedicated their willingness to sacrifice their own lives to protect your right to condemn them. They were not petty or young enlisted kids these were consummate professionals outstanding in every way. I knew many of them or men like them (I saw 50% of the cream of the crop get out when Clinton was elected), turned out they were right because he sent many of them into harm’s way without the tanks their commanders had requested to cover up his Lewinsky scandal. In fact I work with two that were in the movie black hawk down about those events. They would do anything for the US outside of performing social experiments in the one place where mistakes produce death and lots of it. If they claimed there would be a loss of unit cohesion they were above all others on Earth the people who would know it. I saw the loss of cohesion weird moments in the showers and the horror stories from the medics when I was in and that was during the don't tell days. If you wish to dig up some gun decked PC reports that counter this go ahead and I will explain in detail why they are meaningless. I was there, and have worked with other who have been there in every war from WW2 on and they all say the exact same thing I did.
Continued below as always:

 

[1robin]

I guess it never occurred to these people that gays have always been in the military anyway?

You apparently understand little about unit cohesion and trust that comes from similarity of background and personality in stressful situations. I am sure a few snuck through without incident. When I was in there were many straight but effiminent guys that were roughly handled by some for the loss of trust that their being possibly gay brought into very tight knit units. BTW in spite of another one of your claims you could not have known I defended one of these men and I did not even know him. I would not suggest pursuing this line of thought. One, I have all the experience with it, between us. Two, it can only be understood by someone with experience in combat zones. It is surrounded by false information on both sides and PC garbage. Three it is a very dear issue and I do not want your flippant attitude about those who have given or are willing to give their lives for people who spit on them, to cause me undue frustration with you as on the whole I like you, so far.

Why are Navy doctors blabbing to you about how and why they’re treating patients? Are they not subject to doctor-patient confidentiality?

Not if they do not give any names. The military is composed of and lives and breathes cohesion. The lack of it has lost wars and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The greater the close knit trust a unit has the greater capacity to fight and especially survive. No matter what rules exist everyone knows almost everyone else’s business and it should be that way. It produces trust and familiarity. No silly civilian "rights" PC garbage has a place there. That stuff is bad enough simply screwing up the civilian world, the military is no place to experiment and effectiveness, cohesion, and therefore survivability is all that should motivate military policy. This reminds me of the first women pilot they put on me ship. She came in a little too hot, flipped upside down, panicked and ejected straight into the sea at about 100 mph. The very first one. I do not mention that because one crash is enough to judge the issue on but that it being the very first one it was quite remarkable. Pilots live in a unique environment in the military and about the best place to experiment if any has to be done. Not in the infantry. The standards were just lowered in the last 6 months so that more women can pass the physical requirements for special ops. How many will die because half the team is far weaker than the other and they are having social problems inherent in all mixed environments. Is a person’s (nonexistent) right to do whatever they wish greater than the senior Chief's right to live who enlisted long before this PC crap was in vogue?

They’re doctors, they treat illness and disease. I guess they’ll have to get over it. I’m sure Navy doctors have seen some pretty horrific stuff anyway.

Nothing this disgusting. Is there anything so diabolic that it would ever cause you to throw the brakes on what you wish was true. Since it has resulted in the sacred right to kill babies by the millions plus all those other stats I mention and countless more yet still the failure will not be admitted. Even rectal cancer that only results from gay activity and it's costs in the millions added to the mix only results in your demand that reality adjust to the moral insanity. This world stands no chance against that. Only God can and will correct something going that wrong at that momentum.

Nonsense.

Which fact of reality are you denying this time?
1. We are broke.
2. New coverage costs someone money.
3. The Government produces no money.
4. They will borrow it as they do for half of what they spend or charge us more as they wish to anyway.
Which fact above is the latest victim of denial of secularism?

How?

There is no possible way on the face of the Earth you do not know exactly what I am talking about. Most twelve year old knows this. They have to in this brave new secular Utopia that is being created in spite of its obvious failures.

Apparently it does. All your objections to homosexuality have to do with how it may inconvenience you.

Most wrong things in my views cause harm as a byproduct. Not all but many. In your view it is almost what determines what is wrong. In mine effects are derivative in your determinative. Which view is even your mischaracterization of my statements in violation of? BTW I will give an entire list of things that are wrong that I like if it would help.

The Bible.
Exodus 20:17
You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. This is a list of property. Your neighbour’s wife being one of those pieces of property.

No, it is a list of things commonly coveted and is the classic composition fallacy. Some are property and some are "other". BTW the context was voting. I think you should go back to science where I will admit are at the very least competent. Morality and Biblical Hermeneutics and exegesis are not your turf and the military is probably beyond your grasp (because of experience not intelligence). I must clarify as your side will take any opportunity real or invented to play the PC blame game.

If we structured these posts right we could publish them in several volumes so long no one would read them.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Science as I have said is not a thing. It is a concept that incorporates things done long before the concept existed. Observation was done from day one of humanity and just because science claims observation does not mean that science deserves praise for what it adopted. I deal with the end product of science every day at work. It is a very inefficient, faulty, expensive, overly complicated, and messy field that promotes arrogance and claims to know what it doesn't and produces more failure than success. I can't understand the almost worshipful mezmerization (if that is a word) people have with the field. Of course it eventually corrects its mistakes (that is what my job is all about) yet it deserves little praise for doing what Math, History, Literature and every other field of study does as well. I deal with defense technology. It is a field that hemorrhages vast amounts of money that could be put to better use by repeated failure of its most technically senior experts. I currently have a greater than 90% failure rate of instruments for the F-15 which is an old technology. Science is simply science and it deserves no special commendation outside the rare person who discovers (many times by luck or accident) an especially useful cure or invention) but most fields deserve the same. I just do not get this reverence.

You don’t get the reverence for a method that has produced practically all the knowledge we have today. Okay. What I revere are the dedicated scientists working hard to cure disease or discover something about how our universe works that we didn’t know before. They generally don’t make very much money or receive much credit for doing any of it, and yet they want to do it anyway. I respect that. Especially in a culture where money and wealth accumulation are supposedly so important.

I see you have done what you do with morality. You have no answer so you either redifine the issue or deny teh necessity. Those issues were not invented by me. They are what philosophers and theologians say they are asked the most when the issue of life’s most important questions is breeched. By the way for your number 6, instantly revoking all secular distortions and reestablishing the moral codes we lived by when Christianity ruled the US in the 40's and 50's would instantly save millions of lives, billions of dollars, and get millions of kids off the dope they have to take to rectify the damage done by secularism in the modern era. That would be one heck of a start. Science not only has few answers to number 6 it actually causes the problem to be far worse.

I have an answer and I gave it. I don’t particularly care what you think the most important questions of life are since they’re going to be a bit different for everybody. But if you want to tell me that life cannot have what meaning we each wish to give it or that it cannot have meaning without god, then I’m going to disagree with you.

You’re telling me if we just go back to how it was in the 1950s everything will be fine, millions of lives will be saved, billions of dollars will be saved, and kids won’t be on drug, so I have to wonder what you’re talking about. Sure life was great in the 1950’s if you were a white male. Not so great if you were a female (especially a colored female, a single female or a gay female), a gay person, a black person or any other minority group. What was so Christian about the 1950’s anyway? Because you said prayer every morning before school started? Anything else?

Science cures disease. Science increases life span. Science increases quality of life. Science gives us clean drinking water. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

No we should not assume so but we should investigate and be willing to follow the truth. We should not look primarily to science to causes as many problems or more than it fixes, is impotent to answer those questions, and in its arrogant omniscience even denies the actual cause of most of our problems, sin.

Yeah, you know why? Because the Christian construct known as sin, ISN’T responsible for the actual cause of most of our problems. Thanks to scientific inquiry revealing the real causes of disease, we know that now.

If you disagree with the questions then you disagree with the average person not just me. These questions have been known to be the most profound issues of humanity for a very long time.

Okay.

I have already painstakingly illustrated this several times. One last time and that’s it.
1. I believe what is known to science as fact or highly likely is perfectly consistent with the Bible.
2. I do not think true science and the Bible conflict and there is no problem.
3. The area of science that is used to contend with the Bible is almost always within the theoretical sciences and is not reliable and is full of faith, speculation, falsehoods, and arrogance and that is where I have a problem with it.
I like science and respect scientific people. I do science and have studied it. It si only that terribly faith based, speculative, unknowable theoretical area where I contend with it. I would not even do that if it were not for its misuse in theological issues by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc.... and poor people so mesmerized by it they believe what they say. If Christians had never existed the very heart and soul of science would disappear. A large portion of its greatest discoveries and greatest scholars would never have existed. There is science and crap called science and within the crap is where Biblical contentions originate. What do you do or what are you supposed to be doing for a living that allows you so much free time to post? Do you sleep? Why are you so prolific? I do not believe aliens exist and I live my life as if they don’t, I do not debate them.

There is no evidence of a global flood. There is no evidence that people ever lived to be several hundred years old. God supposedly made plants before the sun. I’m curious how you reconcile those things.

If there were no Christians, then someone else would have done the science. Islam had a great scientific day in the sun that lasted several centuries, before they had a religious reformation which changed all that. The ancient Greeks weren’t Christian and they were interested in examining and understanding the world. People want to know this stuff, regardless of their religious affiliation. Science is done by people who are apparently fascinated and awed by the world we live in. Those aren’t feelings restricted to Christians alone. I find the world and the universe to be absolutely amazing.

I don’t like to get too specific on the internet (I’m a bit weird like that) but I work in the fields of brain sciences and psychology. I don’t know how prolific I am but it’s something that’s near and dear to my heart given some personal experiences I have had which pushed me into the field. Being a bit of a nighthawk, I don’t sleep very much. I work strange hours, so I spend an hour or two here and there posting when I have so down time.

I don’t believe aliens exist. You don't believe aliens exist. And yet here we are talking about them.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Trust me there is no need to review.

Whew! That saves me some time.

It is logically absurd to claim Murder is an actual wrong when you can't even show actual wrongs exist in the first place unless you do what Harris did and simply assume that there exist absolute objective wrongs without any source for them. There is rarely with theological debates a slam dunk issue as obvious as morality. The attempt to salvage the unsalvageable IMO indicates desperation.

Wrong exists to the degree we acknowledge it. I don’t think there are absolute rights and wrongs as I have said, given that a right or wrong action apparently depends on the situation being discussed. Killing another person is considered wrong in certain situations and right (or acceptable) in others. Lying is the same. Stealing is also similar.

No that is what we use to determine preference. None of those things can make any act right nor any act wrong. In fact Hitler, Stalin, Mao and thousands of other atheistic tyrants used those exact same methods to arrive at the opposite conclusions. Those terms are what is force fit into a void where God was excavated from and they do not belong there and are utterly incapable of making any act ever committed wrong or right. Those terms and any others invented, coughed up, or plucked from this air are all equal to opinion.

That is what morality is and how it developed. All we have to use in determining these things are our brains: our experience, our rationality, our ability to reason, our emotions, our ability to learn and understand consequences, and our ability to utilize logic. This is how societies form in the first place. People with similar preferences come together and decide that if they want to live together as peacefully and cohesively as possible, that they all have to agree to certain terms and moral principles that everyone is to follow. Much of the time these morals are codified. This explains why morals change over time. It explains why different societies have different moral precepts. And it explains why individuals have slightly different moral beliefs than other individuals.

We don’t need an absolute authority to determine what we feel are right and wrong actions. And I would argue that a framework in which absolute divine authority is required to determine moral actions, leads us down a rather scary path where something is simply right or wrong by command, completely void of any rationality or reason on the part of the individual. This is how we get suicide bombers and Inquisitions. The Nazis tried the “we were just following orders” line at the Nuremberg trials and the rest of the free world decided that just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Hitler wasn’t an atheist by the way, but whatever. None of the people you mentioned killed in the name of atheism or on some grand atheistic doctrine or something because no such thing exists. Atheism isn’t an ideology. Those regimes were not the result of a group of people who had become too attached to critical thinking or rationality or the demanding of evidence. I would say that the actions of totalitarians have far more in common with religious, rather than secular values, as I discussed above and in earlier posts. The whole idea of totalitarianism being to submit without thinking, follow orders with question which is much closer in ideology to religious views than to atheistic ones.

I will explain exactly how that works. I use those things to excavate the truth for God's existence from reality. That option does not exist for morality without a God. There is no force that encoded moral facts into nature for your reason to find. So you must do the only thing available, determine what you or someone else prefers and redefine morality as being equal to the ethics you invented that were not found encoded into reality because no encoder exists.
Acceptable and right are two vastly different issues.

That’s how groups of people form moral opinions. It doesn’t matter whether or not you think morality can exist without god. We have morality. And it’s obvious to me, that it comes from ourselves. (See above.) Acceptable and right are not 2 vastly different issues.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Nothing I, you, nor any other mortal ever thought made anything right or wrong. We can make it acceptable or unacceptable but as everyone knows legality has little to do with actual right and wrong. As the Romans so eloquently put it. There are acts against social norms and there are acts against an objective moral standard. They as most instinctively know there are actual rights and wrongs but as all atheists must they assumed it to be true without any way to account for that fact. You are very intelligent, too intelligent not to be able to see the obvious facts I am illustrating. The only explanation I can even theoretically think of is that your desire to account for all desirable things within atheism is overriding your ability to objectively recognize facts in this case.

Our collective decision to determine what is right or wrong has made things right or wrong. Why do you think morality changes over time? Why do you think different societies accept different moral precepts? Living in Saudia Arabia is vastly different than living in the United States. There is a way to account for this, and I have already given it.

So? Why are we special without God? Why are we needed without God? Why would our existence or nonexistence have any moral implication within a cold uncaring natural universe? You have simply redefined right and wrong to be preferred or not preferred. We would have declared the extinction of the insects that carry deadly diseases as preferable but the insects themselves would not. Why is what we prefer the standard and what the insects preferred not. You can invent some kind of invalid intelligence requirement but what if a more intelligent alien species decided that for them it is preferable that we are now their food source and they would do so with the same validity you do for cows. I imagine you would instantly abandon your inadequate moral reasoning and declare the aliens to be objectively wrong in that case. These silly rationales are quickly discarded when they become inconvenient and only survive in the absence of opposition or need. That is why in times of sever crisis it is your side that moves to mine and not the other way around in general. There are no Atheists in foxholes being a general example.

Why are we NOT special without god, I think is the better question.

I think the life we see on earth is pretty darn amazing given that it appears to be just us in this vast expanse of the universe where apparently it’s a miracle that we even exist at all. We all get a very brief time to share in this vast amazingness which is our world. To me that’s what makes life so precious. I don’t exclude insects or reptiles or anything else from the equation.

What I was saying about existence isn’t really a matter of special or not. Existence is all we have, it is what we are. If you don’t have that then you have nothing. To us, that is a very important thing, I’d say the most important. We get one shot at this life and then we are gone. That's the best reason in my opinion to treat every life as precious. Contrast that to the belief in an afterlife in which we go on living forever in some paradise somewhere. From that standpoint, what's wrong with killing a baby before it grows up and starts sinning and jeopardizes it's chances of ending up in heaven? You'd actually be doing the baby a favor. That's a scary implication to me.

Can the “no atheists in foxholes” nonsense please. I could give examples of people who have witnessed heinous atrocities and decided as a result that there cannot be any god. I could also give examples of people who contemplated the problem of suffering in the world and similarly decided that there is no god. This isn’t some exclusive situation where everyone rushes to your side when faced with peril, which is why it’s a silly claim.

Yet again preference not morals. You have redefined morality to be specieism and assumed a superior value for human life that supersedes all other life and without any source to justify it. I disagree with most of what atheists post but recognize most issues as debatable enough that both sides are acting reasonably but when even the most obvious and absolute failures of atheism are defended it cause me to doubt the validity of argumentation in the other less obvious arenas. Proving any actual moral truths exist within atheism is impossible and the attempt only harms the credibility of the one who makes it. If I was an atheist I would do what most have done and claim objective morality is an illusion and we invent ethics that have no actual basis in right and wrong but that we find necessary and convenient even if a superiority of our species is assumed for convenience. I am half glad to have a subject so easily distinguishable (not that that makes any difference to some atheists) and half frustrate with it because it is not much of a challenge. It is like when Israel whips its neighbors that invaded them decisively time after time but the Muslims still yell victory and believe in Allah despite his abandonment of them in every battle with God's children.

That’s what morals are. I’ve never said once that absolute moral values exist. I’ve also never said that human life supersedes all other life. Humans couldn’t exist on this planet without the other life that exists on it.
The animal kingdom have varying moral arrangements as well, they’re just different than ours. (Never mind that we are animals too. )

 

[SkepticThinker]

I am not discussing what you find meaningful in something. I mean what objective meaning a things has. What you find meaningful is subjective and meaningless in a discussion of this kind and dies with you. All of us including you intuitively think that reality must have some objective purpose and life some objective meaning. My God as usually explains those universal instincts and atheism as usual must either deny them of cast about in the dark for something no matter how invalid to plug the hole.

I think the meaning we give to our own lives IS important. You don’t. So?

I don’t think reality must have an objective purpose or that life has some objective meaning and I don’t know how you can say everyone in the world does either. You think it does because your religion requires it.

Since are many mutually exclusive claims in cosmology and almost any scientific claim does that mean there are none that are right. I also am only responsible for what the Bible claims. My God is not affected by pointing out the problems with Hinduism or Islam. I also was talking about a God concept in general not the specific forms it takes.

Sure, it doesn’t mean they’re all right but they could actually all be wrong.

That is like saying that a painting is only as objectively good as my subjective opinion on it. I also would add that ascetic value is an objective fact even if no one was alive to appreciate or evaluate it.

The evaluation of art is subjective. I don’t think Jackson Pollock’s paintings are all that noteworthy, but apparently some people do given that his artwork sells for millions of dollars.

That is not what I am saying here. I am saying a universe created by any theistic God has a purpose. A universe that appeared from nothing is purposeless, immoral, and arbitrary. However that is not what we have. We have a universe in need of a creator, one that has a moral dimension all humans apprehend (even most animals), and one that appears to be tuned for our existence.

Obviously I disagree with your assertion that the universe is in need of a creator (either with or without moral dimensions). Until you can provide evidence of such a creator, I’m not going to accept your assertion. Sorry.

I think we have exactly the world we should expect to find if there was no grand creator.I see no evidence of any fine-tuning. Which is why I say meaning comes from within. I would go further and point out that it does in fact appear that meaning comes from ourselves given that you think life has a completely different meaning than I do. And our meaning is going to be different from the next guy who shows up in the thread.

I was not discussing meaning so fleeting and trivial that it dies with whatever created it. That is not the kind of meaning the people who have asked those questions since the dawn of man have been asking about.

Okay, that’s fine. Why have we not found this grand meaning yet?

No, that is what an argumentative atheist like a Hitchens must distort the claim into in order to evade the implications.

Hitchens’ argument is somewhat different from the one I gave.

Your points concern some kind of claim of optimality that the Bible nor I have ever made.

Did you not say the universe is fine-tuned for life?

Your "problems" are only problems if God had limited time. I only need to show that the chances that universe that would support life even if it was one example are almost infinitely less probable than one that would not support any. You are familiar with cosmology enough to know that is the case. This is another example of an argument so obvious that the denial of it damages the credibility of the one doing so. Countless scholars on your side easily concede the point because it is so obvious. Unfortunately in their rabid attempts to escape the conclusions they have invented all manner of fantasy to allow other explanations and we have covered a few. The universe appears to be fine-tuned for us is a well conceded fact on all sides. Inventing a fantasy to allow escape as bad as it is is better than denying the reality we actually have.

I don’t care what you claim countless scholars do or don’t do (and I would disagree with that assertion anyway). I’d rather you just address the argument. What I pointed out to you is that the appearance of fine tuning doesn’t make it fine- tuned for us. And since we know how all life has adapted to the environments we find ourselves in it only makes sense that we are fine-tuned to the universe rather than the other way around. That’s what the puddle example was all about. The fact that if the universe were different we may not be here doesn’t amount to much, to me. Something else could be here, or nothing at all. So? I still don’t assume life was the goal of the universe.
And please don’t give me this stuff about god having unlimited time to do whatever. Was “he” just tinkering around for all those billions of years? What’s the point in waiting billions and billions of years to introduce the simplest form of life that not until billions of years later would produce us, if we were the goal all along?
I’ve seen you appeal to these probability equations and I’ve seen others defeat those arguments, so I’m not going to get into that.

 

[SkepticThinker]

That would only be the case if we knew more puddles existed or ever could. We find a single puddle so in need of a God we have dismissed, that we invent other puddles without any evidence as a sort of defense mechanism and where it really goes bad is we call that science and insist it is evidence not faith based. Cal it faith and you can fantasize all you wish. Call it science, and you are hoisted on your own petard.

We do know puddles exist. I find the fine tuning argument to be silly, arrogant and self-centered and inaccurate. That’s why I gave the puddle example. I say the defense mechanism is the belief that the hole was made for us.

The rest of this is about science, I guess? I’m not really sure.

You must not be familiar with the argument. If one parameter was changed infinitesimally (the expansion rate for instance) there would no universe to have any life in of any kind.

I’m familiar with the argument.

Maybe there would be a different universe with no life. Or a different universe with different life. Or no universe. There’s no indication this universe was made just for us.

Even if the aliens did so it only kicks the can down the road.

I don’t believe I said science has shown us that it’s possible that aliens seeded life on earth. I was wondering if you thought I had. Hence the question mark.

My second statement was in regards to life coming from non-life.

I meant to ask why are you relying on one of the oldest of these experiments. Have they not even improved on the vanishingly small accomplishments that Murray achieved. Which by the way have all been found to be unlike what early Earth is now supposed to be like.

I’m not. That experiment has been re-visited and re-examined (I provided an article on that). And much further testing has been done and in at least one case, adenine was produced from a mixture of hydrogen cyanide and ammonia. I know I provided more than one study for you.

I expected it to produce exactly what they did. Low equilibrium complexity. However until they can produce what they actually claim. That life was a result of a lightning strike in a pool then it is meaningless in our context. If life requires a million steps or conditions to arise, producing the simplest 20 or 30 is not a meaningful result for our discussion. I expect them to actually provide even contrived evidence if that is all they can to what they claimed happened of quit claiming it did until then, in a reasonable universe the wisdom of that would be apparent.

I’ve asked before and I’ll ask again, how do you define “low equilibrium complexity?”

Who says life requires a million steps or conditions to arise? Even if that were the case, producing the simplest 20 or 30 is an excellent start and begins to answer the question, “Can life come from non-life?” No one is claiming there isn’t more work to be done here. I think the results we’ve seen so far are quite amazing and absolutely fascinating.

Instead of my naming every natural process known to produce all low complexity without any high complexity why don't you tell me the ones that violate this principle that is true even in mathematical models, as you would have an infinitely shorter list. I will give you one that you can do and one that is well known to illustrate this very well-known fact of nature. Get 10 pool balls and drop them on the ground time after time. How long do you think it will take before they all line up in a line in the correct order? Since DNA has 3.2 billion of these variable how long would that take? If you have ever seen contact, the scientists were looking into space for a signal. They said they would know if intelligence existed if they got back a message with complexity and a patter. Why, because nature does not build complexity of any great size.

They could all line up in order on the first try.

Can you just define what you mean by “low equilibrium complexity?” And also, can you tell me why you think the earliest, simplest life on earth was comprised of 3.2 million bits of DNA?

I don’t recall them looking for complexity, but I do recall them looking for a pattern, which came to them as repeated prime numbers.

I don’t know how you can say nature doesn’t build complexity. It produced the world we live in and everything in it.

If you heard a series of prime numbers you would think intelligence (unless it meant God existed), if you found a sign that said eat at Joes on Mars you would think intelligence (unless that made God true), and only an atheist would find a copy of King Lear and say look what a bunch of monkeys did on a typewriter. We find things in far more need of a designer that a computer but since we have denied that possibility that a designer exists we must instead claim the making of amino acids is evidence that life arose on its own.

We don’t recognize design by its complexity. We recognize it from our experience with designed things.

We know a book is designed/written because we know from our experience with books and words that people write them. And we can investigate further. It says the author’s name right there on the cover. It has the publisher’s name on the inside cover. It tells us the year it was written and the year(s) it was printed. It tells us where it was printed. Etc. It’s not because it’s complex.

Of course the production of the most basic building blocks of life from inorganic elements is evidence for the possibility of life arising on its own! If absolutely nothing had occurred or been produced at all in every single experiment, you might have a point. But as it stands, I don’t think so.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Is that why its chances of occurance are assigned numbers so absurd constantly. Many mathematicians, physicists, biologists, and geneticists have produced odds concerning life coming from non-life and they are all so unimaginably immense it is quite silly to even attempt to imagine them. Even if cut in half or divided by 10 or a hundred the averages are still so large as to prohibit anyone's non biased faith that it happened. Even averaging the more conservative numbers are far worse odds than selecting a particular atom out of the whole universe.

Bullpucky.

http://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB010.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9390277?dopt=Abstract

 

[John Martin]

One proof for the existence of God is looking at our desires:
We desire life- we want to live God is LIFE
We want union, sex, God is UNION
We want material security- God is SECURITY
We want freedom -God is FREEDOM
We want to know truth- God is TRUTH
We all want happiness- God is HAPPINESS

our desire for life at physical level leads us to death
our desire for physical union ends in separation
our desire for material security is helpless in front of death
our desire for freedom makes us slaves of external things
Our desire for truth is external not to know ourselves
Our desire for happiness makes us dependent of on others

God is eternal LIFE,
God is eternal UNION
God is eternal SECURITY
God is eternal FREEDOM
God is eternal TRUTH
God is eternal HAPPINESS

Truth is that our deepest reality is God. What we are looking for is within us. But we are looking for it outside.
Fro me there are no atheists, all are theists. All are searching for God and all believe that HAPPINESS exists for God is HAPPINESS.
We can speak of two types of theists: theists who look for happiness and theists who look for HAPPINESS.
Atheists are those who do not believe in life, in union, in wealth, in freedom,in truth and in happiness. Are there really atheists?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

One proof for the existence of God is looking at our desires:
We desire life- we want to live God is LIFE
We want union, sex, God is UNION
We want material security- God is SECURITY
We want freedom -God is FREEDOM
We want to know truth- God is TRUTH
We all want happiness- God is HAPPINESS

our desire for life at physical level leads us to death
our desire for physical union ends in separation
our desire for material security is helpless in front of death
our desire for freedom makes us slaves of external things
Our desire for truth is external not to know ourselves
Our desire for happiness makes us dependent of on others

God is eternal LIFE,
God is eternal UNION
God is eternal SECURITY
God is eternal FREEDOM
God is eternal TRUTH
God is eternal HAPPINESS

Truth is that our deepest reality is God. What we are looking for is within us. But we are looking for it outside.
Fro me there are no atheists, all are theists. All are searching for God and all believe that HAPPINESS exists for God is HAPPINESS.
We can speak of two types of theists: theists who look for happiness and theists who look for HAPPINESS.
Atheists are those who do not believe in life, in union, in wealth, in freedom,in truth and in happiness. Are there really atheists?

I see.

Do you have any proof of God that actually makes sense?

 

[John Martin]

When a piece of ice realizes that it is water,does it ask for the proof of the existence of water? When a leaf realizes that it is nourished by the roots,does it ask proof for the existence of roots?
If you ask for a proof of God actually makes sense, I can only say Unconditional love. When I encounter unconditional love in my life then I know God exists. When I experience unconditional love within me for some one then I know God exists. This makes sense to me.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

When a piece of ice realizes that it is water,

Were you unaware that ice is inanimate?

does it ask for the proof of the existence of water? When a leaf realizes that it is nourished by the roots,does it ask proof for the existence of roots?

Can you prove that humans have as direct a relationship with God as ice has with water and plants have with roots? The reason we don't question these things is because they are demonstrable. Can you demonstrate your claim?

If you ask for a proof of God actually makes sense, I can only say Unconditional love. When I encounter unconditional love in my life then I know God exists. When I experience unconditional love within me for some one then I know God exists. This makes sense to me.

Again, how is this proof? Can you demonstrate that unconditional love requires God for it to exist? Can you demonstrate that love, conditional or otherwise, cannot be a result of basic human decency?

It is not enough to simply make an assertion: You have to demonstrate it.

 

[John Martin]

There are certain things which need a lot of self inquiry and inner purification to experience and realize. For example how long it has taken to the human mind to discover that the creation began with a big bang? How long it has taken to discover that there is a a particle called Higgs Boson? Since this particle is outside human consciousness, human consciousness can prove it. Can Higgs boson prove the existence of consciousness?
Just as the physicist have made years of objective research to find the big bang and the Higgs Boson so also we need a lot of inner quest and inner purification to discover the ground of our consciousness. this is not something which we see with external microscope but inner microscope. All the great mystics in every spiritual tradition have done it and found it. Their life and writings bear witness to it.
The Upanishad sage says: he who denies God denies himself. He who affirms God affirms himself. To deny God is to deny our own divine foundation. At the same time blindly believing in God is also not very helpful. We need to have critical approach to understand and experience God. Jesus Christ said,first of all seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all things will be given you. He said, the Father(God)and I are one. Indian sages prescribed three principles:sravana, listening to the experiences and teachings of others.manana,reflecting what is listened and nididhyasana, realizing the truth within oneself.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

There are certain things which needs lot of self enquiry and inner purification to experience and realize. For example how long it has to the human mind to discover that there is a a particle called Higgs Boson? Since this particle is outside human consciousness, human consciousness can prove it. Can Higgs boson prove the existence of consciousness?

This makes absolutely no sense. You're talking gobbledeegook.

Just as the physicist have made years of objective research to find the Higgs Boson so also we need a lot of inner quest and inner purification to discover the ground of our consciousness. All the great mystics in every spiritual have done it and found it. Their life and writings bear it.

And yet none of their writings or lives are sufficient to demonstrate the truth of any of their supernatural claims. If any of them do, then please feel free to present them.

The Upanishad sage says: he who denies God denies himself. To deny God is to deny our own divine foundation.

And Doctor Leonard McCoy of the USS Enterprise once said "Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!"

Why should I give anyone's words any more credibility than that? I'm not interested in beliefs or opinions, I'm interested in facts. And this thread is about proof - not speculations - of God's existence. Where is your proof and how can you demonstrate it?

 

[1robin]

I guess you didn't even bother reading my links.

It's a mistake to keep the civil war issue alive. I like it too much. I did review your links there is nothing in them that contradict the very well-known claim I made. I PROVED the accuracy of my claims (mine were actually more conservative) using factual statistics. As for what the sites did say I will comment a little.

They pretty much said germ theory was coming of age at the same time I claimed it did. Of course it did not spontaneously appear out of a vacuum and I am certain many people knew about Germs years before the years in question. The point I made was that medical SCIENCE in the early 1860 did not allow for germs in its general practice. Science had actually went backwards from what the Jews knew 4000 years ago and it makes no difference how they knew this. They also said exactly what I did as well in that sanitation did become semi implemented half way through the war. Nothing new there. Maybe you can tell me what at those sites makes anything I said untrue.

Your contention rested on the idea that water was scarce. That is simply not true in general. I will list the major battles of the time.
1. First Bull Run. Bull run is a large creek with plenty of water.
2. Shiloh, Battlefield was on the banks of the Tennessee river, I have been there.
3. Vicksburg, on the Mississippi. Been there.
4. Sharpsburg, Antietam river ran through both battle lines.
5. Fredericksburg, Banks of the Potomac river.
6. Gettysburg, an entire evacuated city with all it's wells and cisterns in the middle of the battle field. Plus many creeks and ponds.
7. Chickamauga, Chickamauga river. Been there.
8. Stones River, self-explanatory.
9. Second Bull run, see #1.
10. Chattanooga, Tennessee river again.

That is enough. The only time water was regularly scarce was when on forced marches and there was almost no surgery then. All they had to do was wash of the blades in between surgeries and science could not even do that. It is not even that science screwed up here that is important. It is the cost of that mistake. As I said and illustrated in detail millions have paid the ultimate price for sciences mistakes and the correcting of them did not help all those people. The reason this is important is that science leads many away from faith by using assumptions and faith. Even if corrected in 100 years how many people have potentially lost more than their life because of this mistake in claiming to be true things that are not known to be so.

 

[1robin]

Because you seem to be denying it.
Here is a good, in-depth description of the scientific method:
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html

I suppose this statement at that site is the method in a nut shell.

The scientific method is the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.

What is unique, novel, or praiseworthy in this statement? Science (at least applicable science) deserves respect but not for this reason, nor for the correcting of its own mistakes which exists in every form of human endeavor possible except maybe atheistic debates. Just kidding, mostly.

It needs a special method when it comes to doing good science. It weeds out potential bias and the bad science from the good science.
I don’t know what you mean by “history corrects it’s self over time.”
Our personal conversations and stories tend to become more elaborate and exaggerated over time.

That is only partially true. Actually it is by far mostly false. We know more accurately what took place in vast detail in the civil war than the commanders on the battle field did. We now know Herodotus made half of his crap up. That Homer was talking about an actual place (Troy). That Christ is a historical fact and that Xerxes had 250,000 soldiers at most not 2 million. It is rare that historical knowledge gets worse over time unless you mean the telephone game kids play and not textual documents poured over by scholars.

And I would say that morality does correct itself over time, which is why our sense of morality has changed over the centuries.

I do not know about that and even if true it is irrelevant. I do know and have exhaustively demonstrated that modern secular morality has made most demographics much worse.

Most of what we hold true is subject to the very method that gave us practically every great advance and discovery that society has ever seen. It is a very rigid methodology.
The point is that science isn’t nearly as crappy as you’re making it out to be.

I never meant to claim that science in general stinks. I know the medical breakthrough made, and the guy who invented the electric screwdriver and central heat and air deserve nobels. My stance has been that only in theoretical science (the only part that contends with God) is there almost a criminal arrogance and a despicable practice of claiming truth where faith exists.

Well first of all, this is assuming the exact brand of Christianity YOU follow is the one true religion and/or path to truth. That’s a huge assumption right of the bat.

In many cases I must assume that my view is correct or at least valid in order to debate it. No one says who knows if X is true now let’s examine what X means. However this is not one of those cases. I gave a story built around verifiable statistics. The number one cause of leaving Christianity is a superficial faith based on head knowledge that is pulverized by authority figures in colleges using inaccurate claims. The second is the problem of evil. This is also what breeds the most militant atheists like Stalin (Hume I think) and many other former superficial believers. I will leave this complex issue here for now.

Secondly, someone being exposed to science is considered a “horror story?”

I said false science not science. I went to school for science. Please stop changing around what I say.

Come on now! If people are so afraid of their faith being challenged or they’re afraid of being exposed to scientific principles, why don’t they just go to a nice Christian school then?

A great many do. However I was speaking of a very young and usually naive person being for the first time away from home having PhDs use very BAD science incorporated into a systematic effort to contend with God and using as they do credibility from another area to do so.

No one is forcing anyone to go to Berkeley. (And on a side note, Genesis is not scientifically accurate and we know that there is a possibility that life can come from non-life, so these are not wrong, as you assert.)

A possibility especially one as radical as this disproves nothing on any level. I think you mean is that science has somewhat reliable information against aspects of certain interpretations of Genesis (abiogenesis is not one of them).

Thirdly, you say all of this as though it is a fact that this person would die and wake up in hell. There’s no way to know such a thing.

I go way out of my to avoid statements like this. It never works with atheists. Even if I did not do so in that statement (I probably did) I have done so many times. Officially I am claiming a potential outcome that is likely given the evidence. No God is not a known fact and I have never claimed such.

Fourthly, shouldn’t you be happy that this supposed professor says he wants to drive faith out of science?

Yet for the 100th time that is not what I said. I said they want to brow beat faith out of the student not science, unless you mean some other statement I made somewhere else.

Fifthly, my anecdotal experience completely differs from your anecdotal experience in that in my entire time in university never did any professor ever discuss god, religion or faith outside of a comparative religion class, and not even so much in that particular class. So where does that leave us?

This is a very modern phenomenon, along with militant atheism and militant liberalism. It currently only exists in certain liberal universities along with the absolute lie that the United states and conservatives are bad. It is all symptoms of the same disease, secularism and liberalism.

And finally, I cannot grant that my conclusion regarding god potentially affects my soul’s destination because I don’t believe in souls.

You can disbelieve in cars and physics but IF you step in front of one it will not help. If the Biblical God exists secular folks are in deep trouble and the potential truth of that is completely independent of whether you believe it or not.

don’t see you worrying too much about your soul’s destination in regards to Islam or Hinduism. It’s probably not something you think about very often, if ever.

I actually I think about Islam at least every other day, but Hinduism is so absurdly philosophically impossible and self-contradictory that it troubles me far less. One of the dozen or so reasons I am here is to have my faith challenged often. I almost never listen to anyone (even a Christian I trust) unless an opponent is present as in a debate environment. Confrontation actually makes my faith mush stronger. BTW in order of IMO, believability. It goes Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and then a bunch of other stuff and then Hinduism, and finally Gnosticism.

 

[1robin]

But they did “wash up.”

You will probably never see a show or go to a museum on civil war medicine where they will not make it plain that sanitation was almost non-existent in surgery in the early years. It is a universally acknowledged fact that the most basic sanitation could have saved tens of thousands and WAS NOT performed in any consistent way or at all early in the war.

No you didn’t, but I brought it up to make a distinction between basic “washing up” and actually sterilizing things.

No I did not. I do not think I used the word sterilization anywhere.

Your whole thing about ancient Hebrews knowing more about sanitation than modern doctors is a bit of a silly comparison, especially considering that distinction. Had the ancient Hebrews been operating on people and using antiseptics and sterilization methods, you might have a chance with that argument. But “washing up” is a far cry from disinfectants and antiseptics in the case of surgery and amputations on a battlefield.

I also never used disinfectant or antiseptics. (The words not the products) If you are still so confused after all I have said it may be hopeless.

I don’t think the point is the same either way. They didn’t know anything more or less than say, the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The point is that 1860 men of science did not even know that much and even correcting it eventually does not help the thousands in their graves.

Who cares? They knew the same basic things that the ancient Hebrews did about sanitation, possibly more.

This was actually a comment on the source not the existence of knowledge. You seem to have your responses swapped around.

What were they doing that would have been beyond the knowledge of Bronze Age desert dwellers?

I am not going through over 600 laws to find the 100 on sanitation. Let me illustrate this another way. They had laws in place that made slavery (servitude in Israel’s case) by far the most benevolent of its kind on Earth in their day. I have proven this many times. The exact same difference existed in sanitation and many other areas. They were truly a unique culture.

So now you’re saying the ancient Hebrews knew about germs?

You are making a career out of misstating what I have said. God "potentially" told them to wash up after all the things mentioned because HE knew about germs. They did not need a biological understanding to know God said do not eat pork.

Why were they not the ones that proposed germ theory then? Only Christians could have invented the microscope?? Practically everyone in the western world was a Christian so it’s not that extraordinary that it would have been a person who professed to be a Christian to have done so. That certainly doesn’t mean that Christians had some kind of special or divine knowledge that nobody else was privy to.

I am not sure where you got this.

A few minutes ago you were dumping all over scientists for not coming up with germ theory earlier than they did and now you’re extolling the virtues of Christian science?

I am not sure that is what I was doing. I do however claim that Christians have contributed more to science than any other similar demographic. Most of the actual fields of science were began by Christians. Get whatever meaning you wish out of that.

I would gladly do so if you could point out to me where I am wrong.

Morality is one of many. Do not worry about it. Getting an atheist to concede the slightest point no matter how obvious is worse than putting a cat in a trash can. I no longer expect it.

 

[1robin]

Bullpucky.

http://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB010.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9390277?dopt=Abstract

I can eliminate everything at any of those sites with a single claim. It will also demonstrate the intellectual dishonesty that exists within these theoretical fields. Without looking I will guarantee (I would bet if possible) that not one of them actually included values necessary to even get to a state where their fantasies could even theoretically even take place.

I am sure they did not include the probability of getting a universe that will even allow this or anything about life of any kind to arise in the first place. It is no less a necessity to have a life permitting universe in order to get any life out of one. I will ignore the fact that infinite natural universes are impossible and I will ignore the fact that nothing has zero causal potential. Let's say nothing can produce everything (I can't believe it has come to this). If nothing could have produced this universe then how improbable was getting one that can allow life of any kind to even have the snow balls chance in Hades of arising on its own to begin with. Since nothing is so magical it can overcome every known observation ever made then by what is it constrained. It makes less sense than it already does to say well nothing can produce this type of universe but not that one. So the number of universes possible versus the number of universes that could support life is one in infinity. In other words no freaking way. Not to mention the chance that Suns would exist with the extremely delicate mechanisms that allow carbon to be produced. Nor to mention the unimaginable probabilities involved in Chemical evolution. As for life it's self lets just look at a single aspect among millions needed to get to life.


This narrows the focus to the fact that all proteins must consist of all left-handed
amino acids. Similar to the example I gave with dropping coins, there are only two
choices, left and right hand amino acids. So to calculate the probability of creating a
single protein of 1000 amino acids would simply be 1 chance in 21000, which comes out to
a probability of 1 chance in 10301. When we take the probability of creating a single protein of left-handed amino

acids (1 chance in 10

301), and figure in the maximum possible reactions in the universe​

over 15 billion years (10143), it will yield a probability of 1 chance in 10158. We can
conclude that the random chance of biological evolution to create a single protein​

anywhere in the universe over 15 billion years is essentially zero.
​

http://www.universitycad.com/creation/articles/English/The_Probability_of_Evolution.pdf
This is just for one protein.

Unfortunately or maybe (fortunately) I do not have the time to comb through the papers at your sites to find where their numbers go so horribly wrong (I did give one) so I used a pre-emptive strike that eliminates their arguments before hand.You need a universe with structure before the discussion can even occur.


​