Is Richard Dawkins a good scientist?

[1robin]

This is where you and I differ: you assume the god you believe in exists and I don't.

No I do not. At one time I did not believe he existed and if he did I hated him. I however saw certain things that convinced me other wise and eventually I accepted Christ and was born again. Therefore I now know he exists. It is similar to a discussion about the North Poll. If I have actually been there and know there is a Wal-Mart there then I know your claims (when you have not been there) that a Starbucks is there are false. I do not blindly assume anything. Now I argue for the belief that Wal-mart exists at the north poll based on the testimony of 1 out of every 3 people on earth who have been there and the great teachers and Wal-mart reps who have written a book about it's existance at the north pole.

Because we have no evidence of your god (or any others), then why should I take what is written in an ancient text as some sort of 'proof'?

Because testimony exactly like the Bible contains is what is used in court rooms in every nation everyday do. Why is it the preffered method of determining life and death issues but somehow not worth anything concerning God. Double standards.

I could just as well get a review of a different god from another religion which would argue its case equally well.

No they can't. Not even close. The Bible is the most reliably attested book of anykind in ancient literature by light years. It is even far better than many more modern texts. I mean anykind of book not just religous texts. I am sure you believe Ceaser, Socrates, Plato, Xerxes, Hammurabi, and Nero existed yet the textual evidence for them is far less than for Christ.

My point is there are numerous deities that have 'existed' throughout history - many of which have performed miracles regarding one thing or another. There is no objective evidence for ANY miracles (as far as I know) out with the teachings and writings of the those religions.

There is no objective evidence for half of what you believe yet you have no issue making informed decisions, unless that decision concerns the Bible and accountability.

But it's too convenient just to claim that a god did it. It may have impressed and inspired people 2000 years ago when genetic and molecular knowledge of conception didn't exist but, today, more people are questioning the validity of such a claim.

It would be a stretch to suggest Thor created the universe. His personal attributes do not line up with what philosophers say the first cause must be. The record of his interaction with humans is infinitely less reliable than the Biblical God's. It is not much of a stretch to suggest the most universally accepted concept of God found in the most studied and reliable religious text in human history and that has the exact characteristics that the first cause must have and is even the sole candidate is the likely answer. Add in that the virgin birth was predicted many years before it happened plus that the child of this virgin birth would be called "God with us" and be the messiah. Please quit equating unequal things.

Well, it works just fine for the increasing numbers that are rejecting religion. And I'm not rejecting the possibility of the supernatural - I'm fully open to the possibility. It's the lack of evidence that prevents me from embracing such a concept.
When the exceptions have no evidence, I think we are fully justified in evaluating and rejecting such claims.

I will tackle this one in a separate post and prove that what you said here is not actually the case. Please wait for that one. It will be very informative before responding.

Regarding me putting your god in a box defined by natural law, I could equally say that you have put god in a box defined by the writings of your particular religious tradition. You later list various miracles from other religions - none of which, I take it, you personally believe in. That's because you've limited your god to the teachings you subscribe to and no others.

None of that is true. I did not put God anywhere. I found him in the Bible and he chose to limit his actions to being consistent with his revelations. That is a very rational concept. It isn't rational to suggest a God exists and therefore created natural law but is confined by what he created. My God chose to act a certain consistent way, your concept is forced to act a certain way which renders the concept less than divine.

Sorry, I had edited that last part before you replied (I mis-read your reply).

No problem I am always fixing my mistakes.

I've never read an account of life's origins being described yet as a fact. There are several hypotheses, certainly, and it is an ongoing area of research.

I used to have a list of textbook claims that reported it as fact. I also had a list tof textbooks that claimed that Haeckel's fraudulant embryonic drawings were factual. It is kind of mandatory that without God that life arise from non-life. It does not matter if that violates their own laws or the scientific method, they posit it anyway in every class room in the civilized world and call that science. It is faith and therefore a religion.

Yes.
No

Then you believe something that cannot be verified in anyway. Yet you refuse to believe the Bible that has hundreds of thousands of ways it may be evaluated for reliability. I did not say every claim could, just its general reliability. That is the inconsistency I mentioned. What is good enough to establish your moral code by is even when infinitely more evidenced impossible to gain faith through of God. Double standards.

We define and apply these concepts ourselves. We don't always get it right, though

I asked you to show how we can do so without God.
You simply asserted that we do so. That was not an answer.

No, I can't show it (but I'm wondering how all these questions relate to Mary miraculously giving birth....)

I am showing you that a vast majority of what we not only hold as true but as almost sacred truth is based on infinitely less evidence than we have for the Bibles reliability. Yet it is swallowed whole in the former and rejected in the latter. What the Bible calls swallowing a camel and choking on a gnat. That tells me the issue is not evidence, it is preference.

What makes these accounts unbelievable to you?

I have no problem answering this but it will be a very long discussion. If you deem it that important then create a thread and I will get into it.

So, the bottom line regarding a virgin human giving birth is:
It's a miracle and god did it. Have I got that right?

That is a massive over simplification. I was not thinking about this issue when I was born again. After I had that supernatural experience and knew God was real and that divine power did exist it was far easier to give God the benefit of the doubt. Since then I have investigated the Bible and its claims in depth and listened to every debate I can find. I even have many of the transcripts. I believe and will show the evidence contained in the Bible is more than enough for faith.

 

[1robin]

well, it works just fine for the increasing numbers that are rejecting religion. And i'm not rejecting the possibility of the supernatural - i'm fully open to the possibility. It's the lack of evidence that prevents me from embracing such a concept.
When the exceptions have no evidence, i think we are fully justified in evaluating and rejecting such claims.

You claim here that you are open to the supernatural but that there just isn't enough evidence to justify any faith. I submit that that IMO that is not usually the case. I mean no insult but I usually find that preference is the governing dynamic (even if that person does not realize it) and that evidence is not only ignored it is actively resisted. In this case if the greatest experts on evidence and testimony in human history said that the evidence in the Bible was trust worthy and reliable then if your self description was accurate you should immediately have a change of heart and research the Bible and God with hopeful eagerness. Let's see.

The noted scholar, Professor Edwin Gordon Selwyn, says: "The fact that Christ rose from the dead on the third day in full continuity of body and soul - that fact seems as secure as historical evidence can make it."

An example may be taken from a letter written by Sir Edward Clarke, K. C. to the Rev. E. L. Macassey: "As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling. Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate."

Professor Thomas Arnold, cited by Wilbur Smith, was for 14 years the famous headmaster of Rugby, author of a famous three-volume History of Rome, appointed to the char of Modern History at Oxford, and certainly a man well acquainted with the value of evidence in determining historical facts. This great scholar said: "The evidence for our LORD's life and death and resurrection may be, and often has been, shown to be satisfactory; it is good according to the common rules for distinguishing good evidence from bad. Thousands and tens of thousands of persons have gone through it piece by piece, as carefully as every judge summing up on a most important cause. I have myself done it many times over, not to persuade others but to satisfy myself. I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which GOD hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead."

Wilbur Smith writes of a great legal authority of the last century. He refers to John Singleton Copley, better known as Lord Lyndhurst (1772-1863), recognized as one of the greatest legal minds in British history, the Solicitor-General of the British government in 1819, attorney-general of Great Britain in 1824, three times High Chancellor of England, and elected in 1846, High Steward of the University of Cambridge, thus holding in one lifetime the highest offices which a judge in Great Britain could ever have conferred upon him. When Chancellor Lyndhurst died, a document was found in his desk, among his private papers, giving an extended account of his own Christian faith, and in this precious, previously-unknown record, he wrote: "I know pretty well what evidence is; and I tell you, such evidence as that for the resurrection has never broken down yet."

Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University, and succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of Law in the same university, upon Story's death in 1846. H. W. H Knott says of this great authority in jurisprudence: "To the efforts of Story and Greenleaf is to be ascribed the rise of the Harvard Law School to its eminent position among the legal schools of the United States." Greenleaf produced a famous work entitled A Treatise on the Law of Evidence which "is still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure." In 1846, while still Professor of Law at Harvard, Greenleaf wrote a volume entitled An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. In his classic work the author examines the value of the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ. The following are this brilliant jurist's critical observations: The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling errors that can be represented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them. Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, reviling’s, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unflinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come. "Such conduct in the apostles would moreover have been utterly irreconcilable with the fact that they possessed the ordinary constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others of our race; swayed by the same motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions, temptations, and infirmities, as ourselves. And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication." http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/myredeemer/Evidencep29.html

That is approx. 10% of the expert testimony found at that site and there are hundreds of sites just like that one. It includes some of the greatest experts on evidence in human history. It also contained immanent scholars of history and science.

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

Add to this:
1. The Bible has 25,000 historical corroborations.
2. The Bible has no contemporary counter claims in existence.
3. The Bible is the most textually reliable book in ancient literature.
4. Jesus is the most attested figure of ancient history.
5. The Bible has over 2000 detailed and fulfilled prophecies (351 about Christ alone).
6. There are over 20 extra Biblical texts that corroborate certain Gospel claims.
7. The Bible is philosophically consistent.
8. It is internally consistent covering more than 4000years and 40 plus authors.
9. The testimony in the Bible meets every single standard of modern law and the historical method.
10. Christianity alone offers and demands a personal experience with a deity from every single follower. Something no made up religion would ever think about guaranteeing.
11. The authors faced death for their claims and chose death and or poverty rather than abandoning them.
12. Perfect scientific knowledge long before it was "known"
13. The Bible is the most studied and respected book in human history for which a large proportion of the most intelligent and skeptical men in human history have had complete faith.
14. Christianity has survived persecution by the most powerful empires in history. 15. It's followers have laid down their life more faithfully than any other belief system in history. (Not died in retaliatory strikes nor in a suicide frenzy)
16. The Bible contains the most exhaustive and comprehensive claims concerning the most profound issues in human history and that science is impotent to evaluate. Meaning, purpose, morality, design, origin, destination, equality, value, and sanctity.
17. The world with a few exceptions is a far better place for its existence to greater extent than most other religions combined. Thousands of hospitals, rights, equality, the value of life, a sufficient moral foundation, many of the greatest public school systems, and the greatest nation in history have a debt to the Bible.
18. The Bible contains the most benevolent acts and persons in human history as well as the most profound personality that ever existed.

"The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said, that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists."
William Lecky One of Britain’s greatest secular historians.

He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming, yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that the children loved to play with him, and the little ones nestled in his arms. His presence at the innocent gaiety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine. No one was half so compassionate to sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. A bruised reed he would not break, his whole life was love, yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism He has all of our stark realists soundly beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciple’s feet, yet masterfully He strode into the temple, and the hucksters and moneychangers fell over one another to get away from the mad rush and the fire they saw blazing in His eyes.
He saved others, yet at the last Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the gospels. The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.
Scottish Theologian James Stuart

Other religions may offer one or two of those. None offer even a majority beyond Christianity.

There are only a few responses to stuff this absolute:
1. You maintain your preferred position at all costs and find arbitrary and delusional reasons to dismiss experts whose credentials can't be surpassed.
2. You honestly admit that any claim that there is no evidence is incorrect and you desire more information like this and along other lines to consider.
3. That you now realize that the claim there is no evidence is absurd and will from now forward investigate the Bible with enthusiasm.
4. You give up and punt.

Which you choose will determine the honesty in your original statement.

Sorry about the length I was bored.

 

[1robin]

Not only physics. Biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology, history, archaeology, anthropology, etc. Heck, 1robin should stay out of religion too.

That is typical. If you can't be profound or meaningful at least be sarcastic. I would be happy to stay out of your sacred territory if it wasn't butchered so badly by your experts as well as much of it derived by faith and masqueraded as science and said irrationally, to show the Bible as flawed. It is not my theory that violates my own law of abiogenesis. It is not my science that violates the scientific method, you hold as sacred unless circumvention is convenient. It is not my experts who's theories are many times 99% faith and sometimes less than 1% evidence.
If you are competent in these areas then maybe you can answer these:
1. What system (even theoretical) produced the very first system with a high enough level of complexity to convert energy into complexity?
2. Can you ground morality in a better foundation than preference and opinion without God?
3. If so then prove that killing every single child on earth is actually wrong.
4. How did life arise without God if as it is claimed by secular scientists as having one chance in 10^80th? Especially when that very first cell must appear magically with the full capability to reproduce, even in the infinitely improbable case it appears at all.
5. When your experts honestly conclude that: Dawkins doesn’t want absolute morality, only a morality which shifts and changes as society desires. Thus, as Dawkins said previously, "What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right?"—it completely agrees with his moral view. http://www.dyeager.org/blog/2010/06/more-dawkins-morality-no-absolutes.html

How is it desirable to allow people this absurd and morally nihilistic to comment on anything outside a lab? If you could stop your hero's from screwing up the world with insanity like this I would have no need or desire to consider or comment on anything they ever said.

 

[1robin]

It doesn't matter what you say - that's what he did. He showed that the argument was ridiculous by logically extending its premises to an absurd conclusion. Either fix the argument (i.e. change the statement "Everything needs a cause") or abandon it.

The argument is not in need of a fix. His understanding is and apparently you’re as well. In infinite regress of causes is no more logical or even possible as an infinite regression of seconds or past events. It inescapably arrives at a prime mover. An uncaused first cause is a logical imperative. The desire to know what caused the uncaused first cause is rational lunacy.

Ooh, could you tell [/SIZE]LegionOnomaMoi? We happen to be having a very complex debate over that exact issue.
Being as good as he is at science requires general intelligence and skill with logic - skills directly transferable to many fields, philosophy among them.
I'm sure you'll be able to justify this to Legion. Perhaps by quoting General Relativity?

What? Are you asking me to go debate another person somewhere?

If you insist that Dawkins should keep his nose out of your precious theology for lack of skill, then I kindly request you similarly keep your ill-founded arguments and irrationalism out of physics.

I have a degree in math and that includes many calculus based physics classes. That is all that is needed to observe elementary flaws in causal arguments. Physics isn't even all that relevant and we have not discussed them in detail so what does that have to do with anything?

Otherwise I shall start quoting topology and statistical mechanics at you.

This boasting and pride reminds me of Voltaire’s declaration that Christianity would be dead in 50 years. He was dead in 50 years and his house was used to print Bibles in. I have mentioned nothing that requires any higher learning at all to grasp and boasting simply repels me. I work in a DOD f-15 avionics lab and work directly for a PhD that is a Christian and reviews any posts I can't figure out if we are slow. So I wouldn't be so cocky as to write checks you can't cash. Pride is the hardest fault to see in ourselves and the easiest to see in others.

Don't make me laugh. That last one isn't even logically coherent.

That must be why professional philosophers use it is every single debate on the issue.

Keep in mind that the combination of these two means that it is impossible for God to think.

Oh what the heck. Please grace me with an exhibition in mental gymnastics in an effort to show this. If you can actually clear up or comprehend half of what you claim you would have a Nobel by now. You don't do you?

Have you studied (models of) other universes? It's surprisingly easy for life to pop up in them.

It is a sad sad state of thought that makes the message in that poster tragically thought to be true. No fact known before 1700 was in a peer reviewed article yet was absolutely true. I used to have a list of hundreds of peer reviewed claims that were later retracted as false. It is a self-serving significantly corrupt practice. I have not studied models of anything that has absolutely no evidence nor ever will that it exists. The list is infinitely long and meaningless. It is also meaningless to evaluate the dynamics of a fantasy.

It's amazing that no evidence or validation at all lets you control the fundamental constituents of reality and build the Nano machinery that you see today, isn't it?

What? I have no idea what that meant or why it was typed.

Were they professional mathematicians? I'd wager that they weren't.

What will you wager?

Just because we call it "space" doesn't mean that laymen get to poke their fingers into a highly intricate and bizarre structure, and claim that they have any credibility. Mathematicians are quite happy with time

lines that are longer than infinitely long, and can get them to work perfectly logically - neither the universe nor mathematics care what you consider "absurd."

As I have said I have over 190 semester hours in higher learning. I used to have the same omnipotent view of science you do until I really started checking into things and getting the contrary view points. Saying that infinity does not exist in nature is not just true it also is boring. It takes crazy theories and exciting fantasy to get the grants or on TV. If you think some hangers on scientists saying that lines longer than infinity exist has any actual explanatory power well me and the rest of the universe will have to disagree. And if you think the double standard of rejecting reliable historical claims based on inexhaustible evidence and the adoption pure fantasy based on nothing is unnoticed you are mistaken.

And then immediately screws it up by having water exist before electromagnetism. That's not a good start. He also uses "light" to describe something which is distinctly not light, and does not become anything resembling light for hundreds of thousands of years.

Good night nurse. Please find the verse where it is stated when electromagnetism was created. I have no idea what you are talking about concerning light. If we are considering an omnipotent being claims concerning limits on power are irrational. IMO you are mesmerized by science and have virtually sanctified it. Your prefer the Bible to be false and therefore adopt very strange ideas to allow it to be justified. You would think that a book as scientifically flawed as the Bible would not have a disproportionate amount of believers in even the elite scientific community throught history. Whe Newton writes more on religion than on science and believes the Bible, scientific arguments against it are quite bold.

 

[Noaidi]

No I do not. At one time I did not believe he existed and if he did I hated him. I however saw certain things that convinced me other wise and eventually I accepted Christ and was born again. Therefore I now know he exists. [my emphasis] It is similar to a discussion about the North Poll. If I have actually been there and know there is a Wal-Mart there then I know your claims (when you have not been there) that a Starbucks is there are false. I do not blindly assume anything. Now I argue for the belief that Wal-mart exists at the north poll based on the testimony of 1 out of every 3 people on earth who have been there and the great teachers and Wal-mart reps who have written a book about it's existance at the north pole.

OK, this makes this discussion rather difficult. It seems that I am debating someone who has absolute certainty about the existence of a god. If this is the case, then anything I say can be rebutted by you with claims of knowledge about the supernatural and how it is beyond our understanding. The virgin birth issue is a case in point. You dismissed the biological impossibility of such a feat with “inserting some chromosomes shouldn’t be a problem for god.” (or similar words). Makes it a rather unbalanced discussion if you use that as your debating strategy, don’t you think?

If you are privy to such absolute certainty and knowledge regarding the existence of your god, why haven’t we heard of you before? Why haven’t you presented your knowledge to the world on a platform wider than an internet forum frequented by a tiny fraction of the world’s population?

Because testimony exactly like the Bible contains is what is used in court rooms in every nation everyday do. Why is it the preffered method of determining life and death issues but somehow not worth anything concerning God. Double standards.

Use of the bible in a court of law is a cultural phenomenon. I doubt indigenous Australians use it to settle their disputes. Any reference to justice or equality in the bible can be found outwith the bible also. It’s nothing special or unique.

No they can't. Not even close. The Bible is the most reliably attested book of anykind in ancient literature by light years. It is even far better than many more modern texts. I mean anykind of book not just religous texts.

Yes, it may well be the most studied book, but what’s your point here? Just because it has been widely read and discussed doesn’t automatically imply the writings are true.
When you say “far better than many modern texts”, what do you mean?

I am sure you believe Ceaser, Socrates, Plato, Xerxes, Hammurabi, and Nero existed yet the textual evidence for them is far less than for Christ.

I’m not disputing that there may have been a teacher called Jesus 2000 years ago. I’m disputing the claims made about him. There is a difference.

There is no objective evidence for half of what you believe yet you have no issue making informed decisions, unless that decision concerns the Bible and accountability.

Can you explain? What do I believe and what half is unverified? A bit of an arrogant statement, that one.

It would be a stretch to suggest Thor created the universe. His personal attributes do not line up with what philosophers say the first cause must be. The record of his interaction with humans is infinitely less reliable than the Biblical God's. It is not much of a stretch to suggest the most universally accepted concept of God found in the most studied and reliable religious text in human history and that has the exact characteristics that the first cause must have and is even the sole candidate is the likely answer.

So these philosophers have come up with a list of attributes that just happen to be listed in the most widely read book in history? There’s no way they could have borrowed them for their philosophical musings?

Add in that the virgin birth was predicted many years before it happened plus that the child of this virgin birth would be called "God with us" and be the messiah. Please quit equating unequal things.

So, a virgin birth was predicted and the story became true? This prediction didn’t happen to be in the Old Testament, by any chance? (you know, the one that was written and read before the New Testament? Can you see the potential for using a storyline in one book and following it through in a sequel? Think Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings… Sorry, I’m being facetious, but it’s glaringly obvious that it’s a distinct possibility, yes?)

None of that is true. I did not put God anywhere. I found him in the Bible and he chose to limit his actions to being consistent with his revelations. That is a very rational concept. It isn't rational to suggest a God exists and therefore created natural law but is confined by what he created. My God chose to act a certain consistent way, your concept is forced to act a certain way which renders the concept less than divine.

The definition and characteristics of your god are defined in the bible, as you said previously. That’s putting him in a box.

I used to have a list of textbook claims that reported it as fact…

Then they shouldn’t have. Do you still have the list?

Then you believe something that cannot be verified in anyway. Yet you refuse to believe the Bible that has hundreds of thousands of ways it may be evaluated for reliability. I did not say every claim could, just its general reliability. That is the inconsistency I mentioned. What is good enough to establish your moral code by is even when infinitely more evidenced impossible to gain faith through of God. Double standards.

Morality can be gained and practiced without recourse to a deity, thank you.

I asked you to show how we can do so without God.
You simply asserted that we do so. That was not an answer.

If you are interested, have a look at the work of Marc Bekoff, particularly his ‘Wild Justice’ book, to see how moral behaviour exists in other species. Morality can provide a selective advantage to those species that practice it, benefitting not just the individual but the group.
Morality regulates social behaviour. No god is needed for such behaviour to develop.

That is a massive over simplification.

I thought it summed it up nicely. What else is there for you to add? Either god did it or he didn’t. You say he did without any problems, and are quite satisfied with that. Me? I’d rather know the details.

I believe and will show the evidence contained in the Bible is more than enough for faith.

OK. Over to you.

 

[Noaidi]

Add to this:
1. The Bible has 25,000 historical corroborations.
2. The Bible has no contemporary counter claims in existence.
3. The Bible is the most textually reliable book in ancient literature.
4. Jesus is the most attested figure of ancient history.
5. The Bible has over 2000 detailed and fulfilled prophecies (351 about Christ alone).
6. There are over 20 extra Biblical texts that corroborate certain Gospel claims.
7. The Bible is philosophically consistent.
8. It is internally consistent covering more than 4000years and 40 plus authors.
9. The testimony in the Bible meets every single standard of modern law and the historical method.
10. Christianity alone offers and demands a personal experience with a deity from every single follower. Something no made up religion would ever think about guaranteeing.
11. The authors faced death for their claims and chose death and or poverty rather than abandoning them.
12. Perfect scientific knowledge long before it was "known"
13. The Bible is the most studied and respected book in human history for which a large proportion of the most intelligent and skeptical men in human history have had complete faith.
14. Christianity has survived persecution by the most powerful empires in history. 15. It's followers have laid down their life more faithfully than any other belief system in history. (Not died in retaliatory strikes nor in a suicide frenzy)
16. The Bible contains the most exhaustive and comprehensive claims concerning the most profound issues in human history and that science is impotent to evaluate. Meaning, purpose, morality, design, origin, destination, equality, value, and sanctity.
17. The world with a few exceptions is a far better place for its existence to greater extent than most other religions combined. Thousands of hospitals, rights, equality, the value of life, a sufficient moral foundation, many of the greatest public school systems, and the greatest nation in history have a debt to the Bible.
18. The Bible contains the most benevolent acts and persons in human history as well as the most profound personality that ever existed.


There are only a few responses to stuff this absolute:
1. You maintain your preferred position at all costs and find arbitrary and delusional reasons to dismiss experts whose credentials can't be surpassed.
2. You honestly admit that any claim that there is no evidence is incorrect and you desire more information like this and along other lines to consider.
3. That you now realize that the claim there is no evidence is absurd and will from now forward investigate the Bible with enthusiasm.
4. You give up and punt.

Which you choose will determine the honesty in your original statement.

Sorry about the length I was bored.

This list is just a compilation of "hey, isn't the bible and christianity great!!" statements.
Really, I was hoping for something a bit more than a PR stunt.

Number 12 isn't even accurate:
12. Perfect scientific knowledge long before it was "known"
What "perfect scientific knowledge" does the bible offer? It can't even get the basic order of appearance of organisms correct. Perfect science, robin? Do you believe that statement?

I'll hang on to that cigar for now....

 

[PolyHedral]

Add to this:
1. The Bible has 25,000 historical corroborations.

The Bible only has 31,000 verses. You're telling me that 4 out of every 5 verses across the entire book is historically verified? Including the big screeds about God's law, and the visions various people have of angels, and the stuff that hasn't happened yet?

[/SIZE]

2. The Bible has no contemporary counter claims in existence.

You mean, apart from every single extant holy text?

3. The Bible is the most textually reliable book in ancient literature.
4. Jesus is the most attested figure of ancient history.

OK. So we know that they haven't been modified significantly since they were written. Why does that suggest they're true?

5. The Bible has over 2000 detailed and fulfilled prophecies (351 about Christ alone).

Quote the most detailed one.

6. There are over 20 extra Biblical texts that corroborate certain Gospel claims.

For all this tells me, they could be corroborating "The sky is blue."

7. The Bible is philosophically consistent.

So is Game of Thrones. GoT is also 50% longer than the Bible.

8. It is internally consistent covering more than 4000years and 40 plus authors.

Genesis was written in the 5th century BC. Try 500 years. (Historically, the creation of the world according to Genesis never happened.)

9. The testimony in the Bible meets every single standard of modern law and the historical method.
11. The authors faced death for their claims and chose death and or poverty rather than abandoning them.
13. The Bible is the most studied and respected book in human history for which a large proportion of the most intelligent and skeptical men in human history have had complete faith.

People, even educated ones, are very flawed, and their opinions alone are not worth as much as evidence.

10. Christianity alone offers and demands a personal experience with a deity from every single follower. Something no made up religion would ever think about guaranteeing.
14. Christianity has survived persecution by the most powerful empires in history.

But so does/has every extant religion.

12. Perfect scientific knowledge long before it was "known"

The creation in Genesis is in the wrong order.

15. It's followers have laid down their life more faithfully than any other belief system in history. (Not died in retaliatory strikes nor in a suicide frenzy)

No true follower dies in a suicide bombing... Right?

16. The Bible contains the most exhaustive and comprehensive claims concerning the most profound issues in human history and that science is impotent to evaluate. Meaning, purpose, morality, design, origin, destination, equality, value, and sanctity.

So does every other holy text. Also, science can quite competently comment on our design and origin, thank you very much.

17. The world with a few exceptions is a far better place for its existence to greater extent than most other religions combined. Thousands of hospitals, rights, equality, the value of life, a sufficient moral foundation, many of the greatest public school systems, and the greatest nation in history have a debt to the Bible.

Hospitals don't work without germ theory, and all of the morality you list does not derive from the Bible. If it did, we would still have slaves.

18. The Bible contains the most benevolent acts and persons in human history as well as the most profound personality that ever existed.

According to the Bible, the paragon of morality, the ultimate source of what is good, killed approximately 30 million people for displeasing Him, along with countless land animals. You're saying that the Bible contains enough benevolence to counter 5 Hitlers worth of evil?

William Lecky One of Britain’s greatest secular historians.

"He was educated at Kingstown, Armagh, at Cheltenham College, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated BA in 1859 and MA in 1863, and where he studied divinity with a view to becoming a priest in the Protestant Church of Ireland."
While he might have been technically secular, he was not exactly the Dawkins of his day. :no:

That is typical. If you can't be profound or meaningful at least be sarcastic. I would be happy to stay out of your sacred territory if it wasn't butchered so badly by your experts as well as much of it derived by faith and masqueraded as science and said irrationally, to show the Bible as flawed.

Name one theory.

1. What system (even theoretical) produced the very first system with a high enough level of complexity to convert energy into complexity?

The primordial soup. Study chemistry if you don't believe me.

2. Can you ground morality in a better foundation than preference and opinion without God?

Game theory.

3. If so then prove that killing every single child on earth is actually wrong.

Considering the vast resource expenditure required, what would be the point?

4. How did life arise without God if as it is claimed by secular scientists as having one chance in 10^80th? Especially when that very first cell must appear magically with the full capability to reproduce, even in the infinitely improbable case it appears at all.

See above. The first self-replicator gets built out of chemical soup, and then evolves from there.

How is it desirable to allow people this absurd and morally nihilistic to comment on anything outside a lab? If you could stop your hero's from screwing up the world with insanity like this I would have no need or desire to consider or comment on anything they ever said.

lol ad hominem.

 

[PolyHedral]

The argument is not in need of a fix. His understanding is and apparently you’re as well. In infinite regress of causes is no more logical or even possible as an infinite regression of seconds or past events.

But infinities are easily possible. Long line universes are possible. (Just not likely.)

It inescapably arrives at a prime mover. An uncaused first cause is a logical imperative.

Or, y'know, non-linear time. (e.g. closed timelike curves) Which is perfectly acceptable to me. It's already established precedent in General Relativity.

What? Are you asking me to go debate another person somewhere?

Sure. After all, you're asserting something that he is arguing very, very well doesn't exist.

I have a degree in math and that includes many calculus based physics classes. That is all that is needed to observe elementary flaws in causal arguments. Physics isn't even all that relevant and we have not discussed them in detail so what does that have to do with anything?

Physics, the study of the laws governing the universe, is not relevant to the origin of the universe? You'd better tell Hawking and his friends.

This boasting and pride reminds me of Voltaire’s declaration that Christianity would be dead in 50 years. He was dead in 50 years and his house was used to print Bibles in.

Quite clearly, God is a trickster.

I have mentioned nothing that requires any higher learning at all to grasp and boasting simply repels me. I work in a DOD f-15 avionics lab and work directly for a PhD that is a Christian and reviews any posts I can't figure out if we are slow. So I wouldn't be so cocky as to write checks you can't cash. Pride is the hardest fault to see in ourselves and the easiest to see in others.

This isn't what you said when I described quantum mechanics' model of time to you.

That must be why professional philosophers use it is every single debate on the issue.

It's been well-established in mathematics that "everything" is not a coherent object to describe. Hence, neither omnipotence or omniscience is a logically coherent attribute.

Oh what the heck. Please grace me with an exhibition in mental gymnastics in an effort to show this. If you can actually clear up or comprehend half of what you claim you would have a Nobel by now. You don't do you?

Thinking implies change implies time. This means that either God's thinking (and therefore God himself) had a beginning, or God has been thinking for an infinite amount of time.
From the premises of the argument, both of these are impossible, facepalm and therefore God cannot think at all.

Also, the reason why thinking implies time is because thinking inherently involves your knowledge changing - specifically, your memories. If God already knows everything, then His knowledge cannot change without his forgetting something. That would mean He wasn't omniscient anymore.

I have not studied models of anything that has absolutely no evidence nor ever will that it exists.

Yet you are using an argument that assumes that they could possibly be true. Improbability doesn't mean anything if there are no alternatives.

The list is infinitely long and meaningless. It is also meaningless to evaluate the dynamics of a fantasy.

Tell that to Einstein, Schrodinger and Dirac, who did exactly that and rewrote physics in the process.

What? I have no idea what that meant or why it was typed.

You say:
They and many others that have made a God out of a field of study that can barely access a small percentage of natural law that is only one of many ways to access reality have adopted multiverses or oscillating universe models as worthy of more consideration than theological claims and call it science even though they have less evidence (in fact none) than the theological claims

Science might be one of many ways to access reality, but it is the only one that gives you transistors and antibiotics.

What will you wager?

$1!

Saying that infinity does not exist in nature is not just true it also is boring.

Feel free to go looking for one. There's all sorts of places infinities and asymptotes might appear in the edges of physics.

It takes crazy theories and exciting fantasy to get the grants or on TV.

I suspect you're watching the wrong channels, then. Or perhaps the stations over this side of the pond are simply more accurate.

If you think some hangers on scientists saying that lines longer than infinity exist has any actual explanatory power well me and the rest of the universe will have to disagree.

I wasn't saying they have explanatory power in current physics, only that they exist as mathematical ideas.

And if you think the double standard of rejecting reliable historical claims based on inexhaustible evidence and the adoption pure fantasy based on nothing is unnoticed you are mistaken.

It doesn't matter if Jesus miraculously cured a few lepers - science exterminates entire species of disease. Although I doubt you'll be able to find any historical verification of Jesus' miracles. Not of him, of his miracles.

Good night nurse. Please find the verse where it is stated when electromagnetism was created.

"Let there be light." If He's talking about the Big Bang, then that's what that means. Light is electromagnetism. He's also wrong - the universe is opaque for the first ~300k years of its life. (And in any case, water exists before that happens, which is impossible.)

You would think that a book as scientifically flawed as the Bible would not have a disproportionate amount of believers in even the elite scientific community throught history. Whe Newton writes more on religion than on science and believes the Bible, scientific arguments against it are quite bold.

Newton's name means nothing. Gravity is scientific because it makes a good model - no other criteria is relevant.

 

[1robin]

OK, this makes this discussion rather difficult. It seems that I am debating someone who has absolute certainty about the existence of a god. If this is the case, then anything I say can be rebutted by you with claims of knowledge about the supernatural and how it is beyond our understanding. The virgin birth issue is a case in point. You dismissed the biological impossibility of such a feat with "inserting some chromosomes shouldn’t be a problem for god." (or similar words). Makes it a rather unbalanced discussion if you use that as your debating strategy, don’t you think?

That is explaining the loss before the game is played. I said that my personal experience is why I give stories that have evidence but are not provable the benefit if the doubt. I never said I knew they were true. I also do not debate the issue on the basis of what I have experienced. I know very well that my experience is subjective and you have no access to it. I was simply explaining why I give certain issues the benefit of the doubt. Religious claims as well as historical claims are probability based not absolute. I have always wondered why if the issue could be concluded either way you critics always choose the hopeless way. You literally choose the way that indicates nothing has any actual meaning or purpose and will ultimate end it's futile existence in heat death. You can't gain faith by default but I never could figure out why the doom and gloom route is chosen when it could be either way.

If you are privy to such absolute certainty and knowledge regarding the existence of your god, why haven’t we heard of you before? Why haven’t you presented your knowledge to the world on a platform wider than an internet forum frequented by a tiny fraction of the world’s population?

You are sadly mistaken. By design, the proof is subjective and personal. It is not in a form that allows what my faith gained to be given as proof to another. Every single true Christian according to the Bible has had the exact same experience. I do not know what percentage of those who claim to be are. If even 50% that's 1 billion people alive at the moment that have the same experience. God requires personal faith from everyone (for whatever reason). Faith and the (proof) that came with it is a non direct transferrable commodity.

Use of the bible in a court of law is a cultural phenomenon. I doubt indigenous Australians use it to settle their disputes. Any reference to justice or equality in the bible can be found out with the bible also. It’s nothing special or unique.

That was not what I meant but is an interesting concept. Without God can you show that right and wrong actually exist? Can you show that murder is actually wrong? What I was saying is that the same type of eye witness testimony is used for virtually every court case ever tried as is in the Bible. It was valid to determine life and death issues on reliable testimony in court why is the Bible's testimony not allowed to argue for God. It is a double standard. By the way every historical claim ever made is examined using the exact same methods as Biblical claims. In fact a large portion of historical "facts" are based on far less evidence and testimony as what the Bible contains. Again double standards.

Yes, it may well be the most studied book, but what’s your point here? Just because it has been widely read and discussed doesn’t automatically imply the writings are true.

When the precepts a book contains have withstood as much scrutiny as the Bible has they must be rooted in concrete. If the Bible was 1/10 as faulty as you wish it was it would not still be believed in by the most intelligent minds in human history after 2000 years of severe scrutiny and bias.

When you say "far better than many modern texts", what do you mean

The statement said textual reliability. That means that the textual tradition is greater integrity than any work in ancient history. An example we have about 10 extant copies of Ceaser's Gallic wars that are from 900 years after the fact. We have 24,000 extant NT manuscripts from within about 200 years of the events. As far as modern texts go. Shakespeare for example is not known to be one man, many men, or no one at all. They still do not agree on many titles od sonnets, etc.... Even the modern version of the OT was 99.5% accurate with the dead sea scrolls written 2000 years earlier. That isn't good, it is miraculous.

I’m not disputing that there may have been a teacher called Jesus 2000 years ago. I’m disputing the claims made about him. There is a difference.

So they faithfully recorded historical claims and then lied about the rest and then many died and all suffered their whole lives for what they knew was a lie. Hardly. Many of the greatest minds in human history concerning evidence and history say the opposite here:

http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/myredeemer/Evidencep29.html

Can you explain? What do I believe and what half is unverified? A bit of an arrogant statement, that one.

How can a statement about someone else by arrogant? I said and it is a fact that you have more faith for less reason concerning countless things in your life that the Bible requires. We all do. I fail to see arrogance of any kind in that concept.

So these philosophers have come up with a list of attributes that just happen to be listed in the most widely read book in history? There’s no way they could have borrowed them for their philosophical musings?

What a bizarre idea. Most philosophers are secular and the reasoning is universal. It is true everywhere. A cause must have attributes that make it capable of producing the effect. It isn't complicated to say a gnat could not create the universe.

So, a virgin birth was predicted and the story became true? This prediction didn’t happen to be in the Old Testament, by any chance? (you know, the one that was written and read before the New Testament? Can you see the potential for using a storyline in one book and following it through in a sequel? Think Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings… Sorry, I’m being facetious, but it’s glaringly obvious that it’s a distinct possibility, yes?)

Yes it is possible, yet all actual evidence suggests otherwise. In this case:
1.The authors are hundreds or thousands of years apart.
2. Many of the actors in the events were not aware of any prophecy and if they were did not even begin to think it concerned them.
3. The NT was rejected by the Hebrew leaders because they did not expect what happened. If they did not anticipate it they certainly didn't fake it.
4. The Bible has every marker looked for as indicating reliable testimony. IE the principle of embarrassment, lack of embellishment, lack of myth, accurate historical markers, etc......
Also it would hardly be miraculous if the prophecy was in revelations long after the event it's self. Of course it preceeded the event. Actually by about 4000years. It would be the equivalent of a writer today faking a fullfilment of a prophecy written in ancient Britian in 2000BC.

The definition and characteristics of your god are defined in the bible, as you said previously. That’s putting him in a box.

Maybe but it is a box of his choosing and a box concerning will, not capability. That is light years different from your box.

Then they shouldn’t have. Do you still have the list?

Of course they should not have. The list was lost along with a million other items in a HD crash. I remember that Haeckel’s drawings and vestigial structures of whales were on the list.

Morality can be gained and practiced without recourse to a deity, thank you.

No in any actual sense. Only preference can be. If you were right then you can prove that murder is actually wrong without God.

If you are interested, have a look at the work of Marc Bekoff, particularly his ‘Wild Justice’ book, to see how moral behavior exists in other species. Morality can provide a selective advantage to those species that practice it, benefitting not just the individual but the group.
Morality regulates social behavior. No god is needed for such behavior to develop.

I did not say behavior I said universal morality. If behavior defines what is moral then no one should be locked up because whatever I do is then moral. I am very familiar with the abysmal attempts to define the origins and content of morality without God, and am very familiar with it's failure.

I thought it summed it up nicely. What else is there for you to add? Either god did it or he didn’t. You say he did without any problems, and are quite satisfied with that. Me? I’d rather know the details.

There are other ways to detect the veracity of the claims concerning the virgin birth. I have always been confused by the assumed necessity of knowing how God does things. If God is God then it stands to reason you are not even partially capable of understanding what he would tell you. He is perfect and infinite and we are fallible and finite. Oil and water. I also am appalled when evolutionists say that if God did do this or that what good is it because no science can be done on it. What absolute arrogance. Reality does not exist in order to provide a scientist with an opportunity to suck up grant money. Really just is, it has no obligation.

OK. Over to you.

And now back to you Noaidi for breaking news.

 

[1robin]

This list is just a compilation of "hey, isn't the bible and Christianity great!!" statements.

Really, I was hoping for something a bit more than a PR stunt.

You must be fairly unfamiliar with textual criticism and the historical method.
So I see you chose option #1. Maintain your position at all costs and invent arbitrary reasons to dismiss what can't be countered by reason. I would have bet quite a lot on that choice. 15 out of the 18 in my list are in fact used to determine reliability of theological texts by historians, theologians, and experts on evidence and testimony. In fact most of that list is used in virtually every court room every day to determine the truth of testimony, in life and death cases and have been for thousands of years. You may reject or dismiss anything you need to in order to maintain the preferred illusion but you can't call it an acedemic dismissal or consistent with the actual methods used to evaluate these types of issues. It should be called implausable denial.

Number 12 isn't even accurate:
12. Perfect scientific knowledge long before it was "known"
What "perfect scientific knowledge" does the bible offer? It can't even get the basic order of appearance of organisms correct. Perfect science, robin? Do you believe that statement?

So you found one you think you can argue against and ignored the other 17 and declare job well done. Typical. I am aware of no scientific claim in the Bible that has been proven false. I usually do not spend much time defending claims that concern time preceding recorded history. Mainly because neither you nor I have any idea what exactly happened. Though I see I am the only one that will admit it. I am also unsure for example which parts of Genesis are allegorical or literal and so do not know what to even evaluate. If the Bible was even a fraction as flawed as you want it to be then you should be able to find countless scientific mistakes within later and much better understood verses. For example Leviticus contains many claims that only recently have modern "scientists" finally caught up to after killing thousands by their ignorance. Why is it that a very large portion of histories scientific elite have been Christian and another large part theist? When people like Newton, Pascal, Faraday, Collins, and Boyle and countless others are Bible believers it is hard to swallow claims of scientific inaccuracy from a guy in a forum.

 

[1robin]

The Bible only has

31,000 HYPERLINK "http://www.biblestudy101.org/Lists/statisticsHB.html" \t "_blank" verses. You're telling me that 4 out of every 5 verses across the entire book is historically verified? Including the big screeds about God's law, and the visions various people have of angels, and the stuff that hasn't happened yet?

That is funny coming from a well-educated man. Some verses have way more than a single historical reference. The Bible has 750,000 words and that renders a historical reference every 30 words. I do not find that absurd. Some verses have a historical claim every 3rd word. If you can explain why this is so meaningful I might research how they came up with these claims. Here are a few examples: Apologetics Press - In Defense of...the Bible's Inspiration [Part II]

You mean, apart from every single extant holy text?

What?

OK. So we know that they haven't been modified significantly since they were written. Why does that suggest they're true?

It doesn't. It being light years ahead of everything else in reliability by factors of a hundred in most cases does suggest their divine origin but does not prove it. It simply means that what we have can be evaluated as virtually what God revealed. The reliability of theological claims are multi layered. This is just a single layer.

Quote the most detailed one.

I will do you one better. I will give you one of the most picked on and one I have defended a time or two. The destruction of Tyre. It was predicted:
1. Nebuchadnezzar would attack first and destroy the mainland city but not the fortress.
2. It says he would besiege the fortress but not defeat it.
3. It says that he would therefore not receive enough booty to pay the soldiers.
4. It says that God would allow him to attack and subdue Egypt long enough to pillage it for his soldiers wages.
5. It says another (but not who) would later besiege the fortress and destroy it.
(Alexander)
6. It said that it would be a brutal destruction more so than usual.
(Alexanders messangers were killed so he either killed or sold into slavery everyone there)
7. It said that the Phonecian city of Tyre would never be rebuilt.
(it never was, God was mad at Phoenicia not the geography of the land where Tyre sat)
There are many other details, even what would happen to Alexander after this but that is enough and is exactly what happened. In fact Phoenicia its self started its total decline from that moment.

For all this tells me, they could be corroborating "The sky is blue."

Either you know nothing about prophecy, yet deny it. Or you do know and therefore are falsely suggesting that they are vague. Either possibility is disturbing.

So is Game of Thrones. GoT is also 50% longer than the Bible.

I do not know what GOT is and I never mentioned longer. It is an absolute fact and perfectly obvious factor concerning theological textual reliability that no God would be inconsistent with what philosophy has determined is always true. If the Bible said that A = A' then it must not be divine. It's very simplistic stuff.

Genesis was written in the 5th century BC. Try 500 years. (Historically, the creation of the world according to Genesis never happened.)

Neither you nor I nor mere man who ever lived known what happened at the creation. Unfortunately I am the only one that admits it. As for dates, Genesis was transmitted by word of mouth as all prehistorically information was thousands of years before we have any notion of it's recording in texts. IOW the claims go back thousand sof years before your dates.

People, even educated ones, are very flawed, and their opinions alone are not worth as much as evidence.
But so does/has every extant religion.

So the Bible meets every standard that we have to evaluate reliability but that does not matter because you don't like that conclusion. Even though the exact same methods are used in every courtroom on earth for thousands of years. However let Dawkin's proclaim what happened 2 billion years ago and that is a practical certainty. The truth is the Bible is very reliable by every standard we have to determine that but not perfect and Dawkins is making educated guesses and even uneducated guesses at times. Yet the former is often denied and the latter often almost enshrined.

The creation in Genesis is in the wrong order.

Now your guessing. I am not sure how much or which parts of Genesis are literal or allegory. I also do not know what happened prior to the historical error. I do not know what to defend or condemn. If the Bible is as flawed as you desire, then you should be able to find countless claims in much later are far less cryptic verses (like Leviticus) to prove that.

No true follower dies in a suicide bombing... Right?

If that is what I meant I would have said that. What I said is that consenting to give your life for your beliefs without a struggle is the highest marker possible for the sincerity of that faith. It takes infinitely less faith to kill thousands while risking death in a fit of rage and revenge. No faith or cause in human history has had even close to as many people who made the most absolute commitment to their faith. At one time a Roman official wrote the current Ceaser that he had better invent a better way to get the Jews to consent to call him Lord because threatening and then killing them was not working. He said they all serenely and calmly were choosing death and there would shortly not be an Israel to oppress. Of course I am sure there were exceptions.

So does every other holy text. Also, science can quite competently comment on our design and origin, thank you very much.

Nope, science denies design and has no access to original origin. Dawkin's said that biology is the study of systems that appear to be designed, but aren't. What a goofy statement.

Hospitals don't work without germ theory, and all of the morality you list does not derive from the Bible. If it did, we would still have slaves.

You obviously know little about Biblical slavery. For one it was virtually always voluntary and more along indentured servitude. What few verses it does contain that involve slavery have not applied in 2000 years. The Bible made sanitation a law because of Germ theory 3000 years before civil war surgeons were killing patients by the thousand because they were ignorant of germs and the Bible apparently and did not wash instruments or hands between surgeries. It said that Blood was vital for life thousands of years before thousands were bled dry and killed by the Dawkins's of the time. So much for science verses the Bible.

According to the Bible, the paragon of morality, the ultimate source of what is good, killed approximately 30 million people for displeasing Him, along with countless land animals. You're saying that the Bible contains enough benevolence to counter 5 Hitler’s worth of evil?

Please provide the proof for what you are saying. I sure hope it is not that list that can be found that compares claims about how many God killed verses how many Satan killed. If it is take my advice, avoid the embarrassment and retract the claim. If not plese provide what it is that gives these numbers.

"He was educated at Kingstown, Armagh, at Cheltenham College, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated BA in 1859 and MA in 1863, and where he studied divinity with a view to becoming a priest in the Protestant Church of Ireland."
While he might have been technically secular, he was not exactly the Dawkins of his day.

First I guess you could not challenge the message so you instead shot at the messenger. The message was the issue and he is considered a secular scholar. Maybe a less virulent secular authority that Dawkins but secular none the less.

 

[1robin]

Name one theory.
The primordial soup. Study chemistry if you don't believe me.

Name one theory that what? I have and I hate it, however chemical evolution is at least as problematic or more as biological evolution. The chances are far greater that either undesired bonds are made or that desired bonds are broken than the chances that desired bonds are made and held. Over time that destroys any chance at evolution.
In this case we have a choice between two systems.
1. The Bible says next to nothing concerning primordial soup. There is nothing to therefore rule it out.
2. Evolution requires things from the soup that even scientists in labs making the most optimal soup they can concoct can't force to happen.
As it stands the Bible is intact and evolution has insurmountable problems.
These are explained in significant detail by none less than Dr. A. E. Wilder
 Chemist
 Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry at University of Reading, England (1941)
 Dr.es.Sc. in pharmacological sciences from Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich
 D.Sc. in pharmacological sciences from University of Geneva (1964)
 F.R.I.C. (Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry)
 Professorships held at numerous institutions including: University of Illinois Medical School Center (Visiting Full Professor of Pharmacology, 1959-61, received 3 "Golden Apple" awards for the best course of lectures), University of Geneva School of Medicine, University of Bergen (Norway) School of Medicine, Hacettepe University (Ankara, Turkey) Medical School, etc.
 Former Director of Research for a Swiss pharmaceutical company
 Presented the 1986 Huxley Memorial Lecture at the invitation of the University of Oxford
 Author or co-author of over 70 scientific publications and more than 30 books published in 17 languages
 NATO three-star general
 Lecturer
 Deceased
 Dr. Wilder-Smith was featured in an award-winning film/video series called ORIGINS: How the World Came to Be (shown widely throughout North America, Australia, and televised nationally in South Africa, Russia, and throughout the former Soviet Union).

Game theory.

Good Lord. So the Neanderthal had to call John Nash and ask him whether he should love or eat his neiboor. Like GK Chesterton my faith is increased by the inconsistent and desperate claims of its detractors.

Considering the vast resource expenditure required, what would be the point?

Whatever the point was your statement didn't address it. I did not say prove it was effecient or practical, and you are far too intelligent to not understand what I asked. You claim that morality exists without God that is more absolute than arbitrary opinion or preference. I gave you the easiest test possible to prove that. Prove that killing children is actually wrong without God. Or prove that murder of any kind is wrong. Or prove that without God killing a fly is any less wrong than killing a baby.

See above. The first self-replicator gets built out of chemical soup, and then evolves from there.

Even with all the education you claim for yourself and the imminent superiority of Dawkin's and his ilk, the best you can come up with is, that it does and that is how. This vague and general replicator will never arise out of soup because the chances that right things break apart and that wrong things form is infinitely greater than the chances the right things form in the right order and stay formed until all are present in the right order. Time instead of being the hero, is the doom of that concept. There are many more problems but I have gotten more than enough information by the inexactitude and vagueness of the answer given by someone who prides himself of exactitude and specificity to know that there is no actual answer. That is why no evolutionists I have ever asked that of has given even a reasonable hypothetical answer, not to mention the complete failure of controlled conditions of soup in labs to do what chance is said to have done.

lol ad hominem.

The old I have no reply or counter claim so I will retreat into fallacy claims. It was a rhetorical statement not an empirical proof and therefore no fallacy. I find there is a great over use of fallacy claims for things they were not intended for.

Is there any way to cull the posts down a bit, I have code problems in the firmware for a digital to analog converter so I am down for the moment but will be far busier soon? I would suggest concerntrating on morality or Prophecy. What do you think?

 

[1robin]

But infinities are easily possible. Long line universes are possible. (Just not likely.)

There exists no known infinite in reality. I will allow that there may be some theoretical ones but we are back to fantasy again. They are usually referred to as abstract concepts useful for evaluating issue but have no actual application. We know of one universe. Other universes are based on more faith and guess that the Bible is. If you dismiss the much more substantial evidence for Biblical claims why would I accept the lesser evidence for theoretical universes. I long ago lost my fascination with intellectualism and $100 scientific labels.

Or, y'know, non-linear time. (e.g. closed timelike curves) Which is perfectly acceptable to me. It's already established precedent in General Relativity.

Where can nonlinear time be found in reality? I allow that time is non-constant (or can be) but never heard any professor claim it is nonlinear. Even 2LOT is called times arrow as it indicates that time always runs in the same direction.

Sure. After all, you're asserting something that he is arguing very, very well doesn't exist.

If the Bible was as flawed as you claim and your education is as high as you indicate you should easily be able to show it. I will attempt to view what he says and consider it but technical debates besides being centered on mostly hypothetical things that can't be checked or have almost no evidence are boring.

Physics, the study of the laws governing the universe, is not relevant to the origin of the universe? You'd better tell Hawking and his friends.

Apparently not as they have not been used to explain it. The official consensus is physical law explains everything back to one micro second after the big bang. I think that is extremely optimistic but even if true it does not explain why nothing exploded and produced everything.

Quite clearly, God is a trickster.

It is said he has a sense of humor. There were I think (5) volumes written by a Roman scholar that he said would finally destroy the Bible for good. Can you name either him or even one of the 5 titles? I will throw this in as a bonus. I was watching a documentary concerning miracles recorded in Israel battle reports since 1948. They are numerous and remarkable but one really amazed me. The Syrians built a mine field they said God could not get the Israeli soldiers across. By accident a tank crew on foot found themselves in it. They realized they were dead but soldiered on. A freak wind came up an blew 23cm of sand off of thousands of mines and they could clearly see all of them. It is in the commanders battle report and they interviewed the crewmen.

This isn't what you said when I described quantum mechanics' model of time to you.

Which part?

It's been well-established in mathematics that "everything" is not a coherent object to describe. Hence, neither omnipotence or omniscience is a logically coherent attribute

Please post the equation that renders omnipotence impossible for a God that made mathematic law. By the way where is it that all this rational mathematics and physics comes from?

Thinking implies change implies time. This means that either God's thinking (and therefore God himself) had a beginning, or God has been thinking for an infinite amount of time.

That might be true if we are only considering what happens within the bounds of what little we know concerning natural law. Since if God exists he not only made natural law but exists independent from it then it is not a governing dynamic concerning him. He operates with the context of laws that we have no access to. I notice you do intellectual backflips, deny known reality, and posit fantastic concepts that have no evidence in reality if you think it makes God less probable, but insist on strict adherence to basic concepts of a system that God is independent from if you think it helps. Double standards.

From the premises of the argument, both of these are impossible, () and therefore God cannot think at all.

Your premise is irrelevant.

Also, the reason why thinking implies time is because thinking inherently involves your knowledge changing - specifically, your memories. If God already knows everything, then His knowledge cannot change without his forgetting something. That would mean He wasn't omniscient anymore.

Good grief. This sounds like the metaphysical fantasies I use to come up with before I went to college or became a Christian. God is independent of time. It has no bearing or meaning concerning him. I understand the effort but you are arrogantly assuming you know way more than anyone ever has. If God is what governs his actions (if that even makes sense) is unknowable unless he reveals it.

Yet you are using an argument that assumes that they could possibly be true. Improbability doesn't mean anything if there are no alternatives.

Models that have no evidence are fantasy or more accurate nothing. I do not see the benefit in wasting time considering an infinite number of things that have zero reason to conclude they exist. It is intellectual nihilism and chaos.

Tell that to Einstein, Schrodinger and Dirac, who did exactly that and rewrote physics in the process.

No they didn't. They studied things that they had justifiable reason to believe existed. Not only that they studied things that can be tested or verified to some extent. Multiverses, oscillating universe theories not only have no evidence and can't be checked, they never can. I will amend my position to this extent. Reality has infinitely more than I can consider and therefore have no need to be mesmerized by every fantasy a guy that has letters before his name regurgitates. I will leave that to others and will know if they actually discover something worth considering because they will find every camera, newspaper, or journal they can and make sure I do.

You say:
They and many others that have made a God out of a field of study that can barely access a small percentage of natural law that is only one of many ways to access reality have adopted multiverses or oscillating universe models as worthy of more consideration than theological claims and call it science even though they have less evidence (in fact none) than the theological claims
Science might be one of many ways to access reality, but it is the only one that gives you transistors and antibiotics.

I am grateful to science for that. Actually several of the most profound things were first noticed by accident, but science does deserve it's due. If we were discussing how to get to Mars as fast as possible that might be meaningful. Science is impotent concerning the greater issues of Humanity and so it is a poor discipline to master in order to evaluate or use to comment on them. I actually love science and work in a very high tech industry but it only does so much. I resent the implication that it does everything or is even internally consistent with its own laws and methods at all times. I love what science actually is, and hate what it isn't but still implied to be.

 

[1robin]

$1!

Actually I do not remember who the scholars were that I got that from but if it was more like a thousand I would have found a mathematician that made a consistent quote. For $1 I won't even pay attention.

HYPERLINK "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malament-Hogarth_spacetime" \t "_blank" Feel free to go looking for one. HYPERLINK "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malament-Hogarth_spacetime" \t "_blank" There's all sorts of places infinities and asymptotes might appear in the edges of physics.

Actually asymptotes appear in basic mathematics; however they are not physical things. They are abstract concepts. The same way infinity is. I will grant that I do not know why infinity does not actually exist in space its self, but it is the only even hypothetical location it could. Neither I nor you can put our hands on an infinite reality, but I am drawing the conclusion that is derived from philosophy, theology, and mathematicians, and physicists that I trust.

I suspect you're watching the wrong channels, then. Or perhaps the stations over this side of the pond are simply more accurate.

Greed is universal. Saying you found a particle that goes at 1000 m/h is not news claiming that one exceeds c is and gets the attention and the money. Saying have spent a zillion dollars looking for life on Mars and there is none is boring, saying we have a fossilized indication in a rock that looks like a bacteria is a gold mine even if you have to six months later say you were wrong. It is human nature and even exists in the Church and I hate it there as well.

I wasn't saying they have explanatory power in current physics, only that they exist as mathematical ideas.

I think that the concept it's self is self-contradictory and makes no sense. It sounds like typical flowery rhetoric based on hubris and sensationalism. I think it is BS in short but was trying to be polite above and say it isn't strong enough to actually be relevant to the issue at hand.

It doesn't matter if Jesus miraculously cured a few lepers - science exterminates entire species of disease. Although I doubt you'll be able to find any historical verification of Jesus' miracles. Not of him, of his miracles.

The eyewitness testimony alone meets every single standard by which testimony is evaluated as reliable as stated by the greatest experts on evidence in human history. Scientists have eliminated or effectively eliminated some disease and I thank them for it. It however was not God's purpose to straighten this broken mess out. It was to save us from it's demise. God has therefore saved any who will believe from ultimate destruction. Science not only can't do that it can't even address the issue. I would build the statue for the one who saved my eternally rather than the one who saved me from small pox for a cosmic blink of time.

"Let there be light." If He's talking about the Big Bang, then that's what that means. Light is electromagnetism. He's also wrong - the universe is opaque for the first ~300k years of its life. (And in any case, water exists before that happens, which is impossible.)

That was a mouthful. Prove the universe was opaque for any of it's life. I don not understand what you are saying. Water exists before what happens? Is Genesis allegorical or literal? Which parts are which? Is it telescoping literature? Which parts? How do you know that light did not exist the instant nothing exploded? I do not think that is even hypothetically correct. Every faith based model concerning the Big Bang has light existent at its initiation.

Newton's name means nothing. Gravity is scientific because it makes a good model - no other criteria is relevant.

Yes everyone knows the Newton's name is meaningless in science (even though you threw in even less profound scientific names above). We also know that lines longer than infinity make perfect sense, and that you know that what color intensity the universe was 15 billion years ago. NOT. I guess omniscience is true, you are an example. You should move to Delphi and sit in a thermal vent, do drugs, tell us what battles to fight and what happened 10 million years ago in the Yucatan.

I went to this link: http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/science-religion/138453-free-will-5.html
I didn't see anyone named Legion and I only saw some people talking about theoretical issues that they have no way of proving or knowing the facts of.

 

[Noaidi]

That is explaining the loss before the game is played. I said that my personal experience is why I give stories that have evidence but are not provable the benefit if the doubt. I never said I knew they were true.
I also do not debate the issue on the basis of what I have experienced. I know very well that my experience is subjective and you have no access to it. I was simply explaining why I give certain issues the benefit of the doubt. Religious claims as well as historical claims are probability based not absolute.

You claimed that you know your god exists. This implied certainty and indisputable knowledge. However, now that you have explained further, I’ll let it pass. At least you are willing to now state that religious claims are not absolute. Perhaps you can see, therefore, why many do not accept them.

I have always wondered why if the issue could be concluded either way you critics always choose the hopeless way. You literally choose the way that indicates nothing has any actual meaning or purpose and will ultimate end it's futile existence in heat death. You can't gain faith by default but I never could figure out why the doom and gloom route is chosen when it could be either way.

No doom and gloom here, my friend. I give my life purpose and meaning and it works well enough for me.

You are sadly mistaken. By design, the proof is subjective and personal. It is not in a form that allows what my faith gained to be given as proof to another. Every single true Christian according to the Bible has had the exact same experience. I do not know what percentage of those who claim to be are. If even 50% that's 1 billion people alive at the moment that have the same experience. God requires personal faith from everyone (for whatever reason). Faith and the (proof) that came with it is a non direct transferrable commodity.

OK, you can appeal to numbers. That’s fine. But I, and billions of others, have not had your experience. We may have had totally different – but equally personally transformative – experiences that have shaped and enriched our lives in ways that may not be suitable for you. One size doesn’t fit all.

That was not what I meant but is an interesting concept. Without God can you show that right and wrong actually exist? Can you show that murder is actually wrong?

Can I show it? No. Any ideas as to how I could achieve such a feat? Why would I need a god to inform me of the difference between right and wrong? Are you saying that the only reason you know right from wrong is because you believe an unproven deity told you? The same deity that murdered countless organisms in a flood? Hardly a role model for morality, eh? Thou shalt not kill? Yeah, right…

What I was saying is that the same type of eye witness testimony is used for virtually every court case ever tried as is in the Bible. It was valid to determine life and death issues on reliable testimony in court why is the Bible's testimony not allowed to argue for God. It is a double standard. By the way every historical claim ever made is examined using the exact same methods as Biblical claims. In fact a large portion of historical "facts" are based on far less evidence and testimony as what the Bible contains. Again double standards.

What do you mean by “the same type of eye witness testimony is used for virtually every court case ever tried as is in the Bible.” Are you saying that prior to the bible, eye witness testimony was not in operation? Was there a different type of eye witness testimony involved?

When the precepts a book contains have withstood as much scrutiny as the Bible has they must be rooted in concrete. If the Bible was 1/10 as faulty as you wish it was it would not still be believed in by the most intelligent minds in human history after 2000 years of severe scrutiny and bias.

One reason it continues to be scrutinized after so long is perhaps due to its influence. The influence of the bible is undeniable. This degree of scrutiny, however, doesn’t deem the miraculous and supernatural aspects of it right or true.

The statement said textual reliability. That means that the textual tradition is greater integrity than any work in ancient history. An example we have about 10 extant copies of Ceaser's Gallic wars that are from 900 years after the fact. We have 24,000 extant NT manuscripts from within about 200 years of the events. As far as modern texts go. Shakespeare for example is not known to be one man, many men, or no one at all. They still do not agree on many titles od sonnets, etc.... Even the modern version of the OT was 99.5% accurate with the dead sea scrolls written 2000 years earlier. That isn't good, it is miraculous.

If that is impressive to you, then great. It still doesn’t make the contents 100% accurate.

So they faithfully recorded historical claims and then lied about the rest and then many died and all suffered their whole lives for what they knew was a lie. Hardly. Many of the greatest minds in human history concerning evidence and history say the opposite here:

[URL="http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/myredeemer/Evidencep29.html[/quote"]http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/myredeemer/Evidencep29.html[/URL][/quote]

I think we can dispense with the whole “brilliant minds have analysed it” bit now, don’t you? You have raised this a number of times. I, nor anyone else, has to concur with them just because of their impressive intellect. When it comes to people’s (brilliant or otherwise) beliefs about the supernatural, that is their business. I could devise a list of equally brilliant minds that argue against everything you and others claim. However, I don’t wish to get into a d**k-measuring contest, if that’s ok.

Regarding the claims made about Jesus, it isn’t impossible to deify someone and embellish their life story, affording it greater appeal when attracting followers.

How can a statement about someone else by arrogant? I said and it is a fact that you have more faith for less reason concerning countless things in your life that the Bible requires. We all do. I fail to see arrogance of any kind in that concept.

You presume to know what I believe and what half is unverified.

 

[Noaidi]

CONTD.

Yes it is possible, yet all actual evidence suggests otherwise. In this case:

1.The authors are hundreds or thousands of years apart.
2. Many of the actors in the events were not aware of any prophecy and if they were did not even begin to think it concerned them.
3. The NT was rejected by the Hebrew leaders because they did not expect what happened. If they did not anticipate it they certainly didn't fake it.
4. The Bible has every marker looked for as indicating reliable testimony. IE the principle of embarrassment, lack of embellishment, lack of myth, accurate historical markers, etc......
Also it would hardly be miraculous if the prophecy was in revelations long after the event it's self. Of course it preceeded the event. Actually by about 4000years. It would be the equivalent of a writer today faking a fullfilment of a prophecy written in ancient Britian in 2000BC.

Given that a virgin birth is a feature of several religious traditions, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that at least one of them will feature it in their writings. Again, that doesn’t make it true.

Maybe but it is a box of his choosing and a box concerning will, not capability. That is light years different from your box.

Maybe so, but perhaps the box you have him in is a product of the writers, not the supposed deity itself.

Of course they should not have. The list was lost along with a million other items in a HD crash. I remember that Haeckel’s drawings and vestigial structures of whales were on the list.

Do you remember roughly how recent the sources were?

I did not say behavior I said universal morality. If behavior defines what is moral then no one should be locked up because whatever I do is then moral.

Behaviour doesn’t define morality. I said morality regulates behaviour.

I am very familiar with the abysmal attempts to define the origins and content of morality without God, and am very familiar with it's failure.

Care to expand?

There are other ways to detect the veracity of the claims concerning the virgin birth. I have always been confused by the assumed necessity of knowing how God does things. If God is God then it stands to reason you are not even partially capable of understanding what he would tell you. He is perfect and infinite and we are fallible and finite. Oil and water. I also am appalled when evolutionists say that if God did do this or that what good is it because no science can be done on it. What absolute arrogance.

So we’re back to “god did it” again. How did god do it? Well, he just did, so there.
Where’s the scope for further enquiry in that? Do you ever question what you god does?

Reality does not exist in order to provide a scientist with an opportunity to suck up grant money. Really just is, it has no obligation.

And here we have a point of agreement.

And now back to you Noaidi for breaking news.

A guy in Inverness got his wallet stolen. Stay tuned….

 

[1robin]

You claimed that you know your god exists. This implied certainty and indisputable knowledge. However, now that you have explained further, I’ll let it pass. At least you are willing to now state that religious claims are not absolute. Perhaps you can see, therefore, why many do not accept them.

I am still implying the certainty of the knowledge to its receiver but as it is not available to others discussing the issue it is not effectively a certainty for the discussion and I debate with that in mind. Let me amend that to say I followed the Bible's "roadmap" and found an experience that perfectly matched what it promised and produced what it claimed. I am as sure as having the experience but as of yet not having actually been to Heaven. Does that clarify the issue?

No doom and gloom here, my friend. I give my life purpose and meaning and it works well enough for me.

I did not mean that a certain amount of meaning can be found without God what I meant is that there is no comparison. With God life has ultimate purpose, absolute meaning, relevance, hope that all the injustice we somehow instinctively know are wrong will be rectified and relationships with loved ones may carry through eternity. Without God there is no ultimate meaning, purpose, or hope. We are a biological anomaly that has no actual value and we, plus the universe will end our futile and vanishingly brief life in heat death. No comparison.

OK, you can appeal to numbers. That’s fine. But I, and billions of others, have not had your experience. We may have had totally different – but equally personally transformative – experiences that have shaped and enriched our lives in ways that may not be suitable for you. One size doesn’t fit all.

If we were discussing UFO's (which I do not believe have visited Earth). Then if 1/3 of the population believed in them and 1.5 billion had seen them it would be a virtual universal conclusion they exist. What the other 3.5 billion did not see is irrelevant and arguing from silence. I do not mean a self-help, personal philosophy, turn over a new leaf, meditation, enlightenment experience. I mean a spiritual experience with a living God. As nothing can be proven by that experience and now that it is clarified I suggest it be dropped.

Can I show it? No. Any ideas as to how I could achieve such a feat?

Of course you can't, that is why I asked. You can't but I can, and in that lies a universe of meaning. If God exists murder is actually wrong if he doesn't it is merely not preferred by a certain group concerning certain individuals.

Why would I need a god to inform me of the difference between right and wrong?

I never said you did. I believe we all have a God given conscience which we suppress to various degrees that knows what is right or wrong. The difference is that I can justify my morals, you can only adopt them. That might or might not work for an individual but is completely insufficient for societies. Society needs absolutes at least at the core. Without God not a single moral can be justified as an actual value. For example without God and based on feelings and opinion some cultures love their neibors and some prey on their neibors. Within your system suppression of the ones who prey on their neibors can fin no justification unless it smuggles in moral absolutes that only exist with God. It is the current moral relativism that is a cancer on society.

Are you saying that the only reason you know right from wrong is because you believe an unproven deity told you?

Nope see, above.

The same deity that murdered countless organisms in a flood? Hardly a role model for morality, eh? Thou shalt not kill? Yeah, right…

This is an example of making facts fit a pre conclusion. First this is very likely an allegorical story. Second murder implies killing without justification. Third within the same story it says those people did evil continuously and all their thoughts were evil. If God actually killed them it was justified. In your system I assume you would have God let them live. That would have resulted in either the suppression of freewill and an end to the whole point or thousands of years of oppression, injustice, rape, war, disease, poverty, and countless other miseries. I would not worship that God, maybe you would. Fortunately we do not have that God we have one stops complete depravity before it destroys everything.

What do you mean by “the same type of eye witness testimony is used for virtually every court case ever tried as is in the Bible.” Are you saying that prior to the bible, eye witness testimony was not in operation? Was there a different type of eye witness testimony involved?

What I mean is reliable eye witness testimony is used to determine the greatest issues we deal with every day in law, academics, or politics. The Bible contains extremely reliable testimony. In God's infinite wisdom concerning the most important issues multiple testimonies but yet for some double standard reason it is worthless if it inconveniently implies God exists and we are accountable.

One reason it continues to be scrutinized after so long is perhaps due to its influence. The influence of the bible is undeniable. This degree of scrutiny, however, doesn’t deem the miraculous and supernatural aspects of it right or true.

I agree with that to a great extent. I did not say it's continued scrutiny makes it right. I said the fact it is still considered so reliable after more scrutiny than anything in history has faced suggests it is right. The technique of verifying what can be to judge what can't be is a universal legal and historical technique yet again you dismiss the very same principle when the bible is concerned. We are dealing with probabilities not proof. If 600,000 thousand words of the Bible are verified then it is highly probable the other 150,000 are reliable as well. It is very simple.

If that is impressive to you, then great. It still doesn’t make the contents 100% accurate.

When it beats every other text in history by factors in the hundreds then yes it is impressive to me or anyone else not so prejudiced as to be blind.

I think we can dispense with the whole “brilliant minds have analyzed it” bit now, don’t you? You have raised this number of times. I, nor anyone else, has to concur with them just because of their impressive intellect. When it comes to people’s (brilliant or otherwise) beliefs about the supernatural, that is their business. I could devise a list of equally brilliant minds that argue against everything you and others claim. However, I don’t wish to get into a d**k-measuring contest, if that’s ok.

I only use brilliant minds to counter claims that it's claims are so absurd as to be only believed by the unintelligent. You quit implying the latter and I will quit posting the former. When the greatest experts on what is used to evaluate the reliability of texts like the bible in human history say it is reliable, I will not allow claims that it isn't to go unchallenged.

Regarding the claims made about Jesus, it isn’t impossible to deify someone and embellish their life story, affording it greater appeal when attracting followers.

I knew it, you did not even read what the greatest minds on testimony and evidence said about the testimony concerning Jesus. Since you value the contention you are clinging to, to an extent that anything that challenges it is ignored no matter how absolute, I will only bother to say the Gospels meet every standard by which authenticity and sincerity is measured. They even died for what you claim was a lie they made up. Good Lord

You presume to know what I believe and what half is unverified.

That was a universal truth and does not require familiarity with you.

 

[Quiddity]

I'm impressed this thread has lasted this long. All to discuss a man's skillz in science.

 

[1robin]

I'm impressed this thread has lasted this long. All to discuss a man's skillz in science.

Actually we have barely mentioned him for quite a while now. That is my fault mostly I guess. Sorry.