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Since it is not aimed at anyone in particular it may be an appropriate place to use it. What is banned I think when someone uses if for "I am laughing at you" instead of "I am laughing with you".I wanted to give that a Funny, but I did not want to get in trouble with the staff.
It is Funny because it is so illogical, but sadly, Christians cannot understand WHY it is illogical.
But unless I can be sure you were laughing I cannot know if I would be laughing with you.
I would hope that you know me better than that.But unless I can be sure you were laughing I cannot know if I would be laughing with you.
Ow don't get me wrong. I'm happy to acknowledge that likely they idd do believe what they claim to believe.I think you are seriously underestimating the human capacity to rationalize. It has been my experience in life that human beings notoriously cling on to their ideas as true in the face of evidence to the contrary. I believe there is even a name for the phenomena, but it slips me at the moment. In such cases, you can make a great argument for self-deception. But you really can't make a good argument for outright lying. IOW, yes, despite ALL of the evidence against creationism, they FULLY are convinced in their minds that:
1. Genesis 1 is historical
2. That they are the ones being the "true" scientists.
Anyhow, keep up the good work. Not every person is incapable of hearing good arguments. I used to be a firmly convinced creationist, and was able to hear the evidence, and change my views. So do it for all the lurkers out there who can hear what you have to say.
But you are posting all of this to imply that deception is wrong or bad, and therefor any god that would do this is also wrong or bad. Aren't you. But that presumption is based entirely on the fact that you think you deserve not to be deceived. And yet you can't possibly know this.
It shows that the point you made is both unfounded and selfish.
You can conclude whatever you want. What you can't do is prove that the deception is wrong or bad.
Yes, you keep repeating this over and over, because you think it somehow condemns God. But you only think that because you think you deserve not to be deceived. You think you have the right to judge and condemn God for being deceptive. But your point here falls flat with creationists because they do not place themselves in a position of thinking that they have a right to judge God. So your 'clever condemnation' has no sway with them. And you aren't clever enough to understand why, so you just presume them to be willful idiots. Right?
I have no stake in any of this nonsense. Creationists can believe whatever they want about God, and so can you. I'm just explaining to you why your arguments have no sway over most theists.
I think we are simply going to have to disagree about this, Tag. I think you are assuming conscious deception when in fact that is not what is happening. What I see is simply irrationality. Perhaps I've just spent so much of my time as a counselor trying to help people sort through their harmful rationalizations and defense mechanisms that I just automatically view human behavior through that lens. But I do think it is important to be extremely slow to accuse someone of consciously lying.
I'm probably the biggest fan of Hanlon's Razor here but some of the lies of the professional creationists can't be adequately explained by stupidity. They have been taught about evolutionary biology numerous times in debates. They may not have understood what they were taught but that doesn't excuse the constant misrepresentation of the science. They do know better but they also know that their audience doesn't and that they can sell their lies to them.
Keep in mind that some people sincerely believe things like that Hillary Clinton is a reptilian shapeshifter or that Democrats run a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor. Human beings are PHENOMENALLY irrational.
It's sounds like you're ignorant of what a myth is, who uses the word, and when and why. In general, a myth is pure speculation, whereas a legend has some basis in fact with embellishment added.
The story of Adam and Eve is a myth - the garden myth - and not a legend. It has no basis in fact or history. Like the creation myth and the flood myth, they are free speculations intended to account for what was understood to be a world created and run by a tri-omni god. The Adam and Eve myth is an explanation for why man doesn't live in a paradise despite a benevolent god that loves him and has the power to give it to him. He doesn't deserve it. The creation myth tries to explain how the world - the heavens and earth, light and life - came into being. And it's my opinion that the flood myth exists to account for marine fossils on mountaintops. The MUST have been a global flood, but that would have drowned everything, and that would have been malevolent unless, of course, as usual, man deserved it, and so, that's the narrative. But man is still here, hence the ark.
Some of the stories of David are likely legendary (fiction), just as some of the George Washington story is likely fiction (the cherry tree and "I cannot tell a lie"). I doubt that David slew a giant or wrote the psalms. But until evidence of a historical David was uncovered, it was reasonable to include him with Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses - biblical characters that may have had no basis in history. We know that Moses never led an exodus from Egyptian captivity to "the promised land," because that never happened.
Valid reasoning has nothing to do with holding a god belief. There is no sound, rational argument that ends, "therefore God." It may be reasonable to hold a belief because it comforts you, but that doesn't make what is believed rational.
I know and I kept that in mind. And for most of the rank and file of the creationists that is explanation enough. They are the deceived. But you can't tell me that the deceivers, the Hovinds, Ken Ham and every PhD working for the DI are too stupid to truthfully represent the ToE after having been corrected about their straw men dozens of times.
That could be. Her skin does look a bit on the scaly side. But she is still a far better choice than Trump.
I think that Kent Hovind is seriously deranged. In the same way that Donald Trump is. He does not care about reality, he only cares about getting his way.
As @al_berk pointed out the flood story is probably legendary, at least the original Mesopotamian one in the Bhagavad Gita. The Biblical story is a retelling of that story with changed characters and further embellishment. The legend of Utnapishtim (Atra-Hasis in the Akkadian version) is unrecognisable at that time but a kernel of reality is possible.
Certainly floods occurred, but I don't see them as grounds for writing that story. Those floods didn't threaten extinction, but the story includes a near extinction event.
Somehow saying that a myth like the Lord of the Rings, or How Zebras got their Stripes, is "speculation" seems off. I think people know up front that these stories are fiction
You'd be surprised what fairy tales people believe that they should know are just that: fairy tales. I knew what were real(istic) stories and what were fairy tales from about 5 years old. Fairy tales have talking animals, heroes with extraordinary abilities, magic and they are told in a funny language. I was surprised when I learned that people believed the fairy tales.
You mean like what is in the Bible?
I don't think that people in the bronze age asked where fossils come from. First human, language, that are things that need answers but rocks that are formed like animals?