There is no evidence for God, so why do you believe?

[Brian2]

Or "Opinion equals fact ifn it's MY opinion".

Yes I noticed that too.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes I noticed that too.

You misunderstood her post.

 

[Audie]

You misunderstood her post.

If so that is probably in keeping with a lot of
other comprehension problems weve observed.

 

[Audie]

Yes I noticed that too.

IF you are referring to me and mean what you are
saying, we will take it as yet another bit of nonsense,
a falsehood you made up with zero (0) examples to cite.

 

[Ebionite]

In general, though, I'd say there's a considerable
difference between things that do exist, and things
that don't. And the difference is wholly independent
of an individual's capacity to detect somethings existence.

So what basis do you have for your claim that a scam exists?

A robust bs detector is among the characteristi s of those
not easily fooled by claims based bd evidence.

What difference is there between a "robust bs detector" and religious prejudice?

Your statement about pride is,
interestingly, just your opinion with
no evident basis, which you state as a fact.

I'm happy to back it up if you want to contest it.

Interesting in that it reflects ts exactly the Christian
vanity that I was referring to.

Christianity was the official religion of Rome.

By normal / dictionary use though-

You are claiming as fact that those ( Christians
included ) who favour separation of church and state,
or otherwise not making churchy stuff integral
to all aspects of life are, in some weird cause and effect
way more prideful than chridtian fundamentalists.

No I'm not asserting that it's a fact, I'm arguing that it's truth. Truth can be inferred by reason but facts are generally obtained through observation. That aside, the weird cause and effect as all yours.

 

[Audie]

So what basis do you have for your claim that a scam exists?


What difference is there between a "robust bs detector" and religious prejudice?


I'm happy to back it up if you want to contest it.


Christianity was the official religion of Rome.


No I'm not asserting that it's a fact, I'm arguing that it's truth. Truth can be inferred by reason but facts are generally obtained through observation. That aside, the weird cause and effect as all yours.

I, uh, yeah. Never mind.
You can play silly wabbit hole with
someone else.

 

[Ebionite]

I, uh, yeah. Never mind.
You can play silly wabbit hole with
someone else.

The silly wabbit hole is all yours, not mine.

 

[Brian2]

You misunderstood her post.

You probably misunderstood my post.

 

[joelr]

Chance, probabilities, same thing.

No, similar concepts but very different, especially the way you mean.
Chance - something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause
Chance means "luck" more than probability.
Probability - the chance that a given event will occur. Meaning we can work out the chance with math.

The big difference is probabilities "something (such as an event or circumstance) that is probable" have a branch of mathematics and is more literal. The fundamental behavior of particles obey probabilistic rules, this also extend to all macro events as well. It isn't random, you can calculate the probabilities of things happening. Some have too many variables to calculate but the idea is that something will happen if it has any reasonable probability. Life is made of all very basic substances and has trillions of planets and billions of years for self replicating chemicals to begin natural selection.
Basic compounds exist, energy and water existed and we know more complex compounds do assemble like peptides and nanotubes. Earth had billions of years and trillions of spots where these chemicals were being manipulated. The probability may be in the billions but life has that many chances over time. So if something is probable given enough time to happen it will.
Supernova make the complex elements and the proper conditions put them together to form life.

We do not know why. There could be an infinite universes with different circumstances and laws where life is not possible. If you have an infinite amount then all these possibilities can be realized.

"By chance" is just a common apologetic that tries to give religious people a strawman against abiogenesis. Just like "we didn't evolve from a monkey"

I guess that given enough time you are going to be right about something, if that is possible. At this stage I would say the probability is low however.

Of course it's low. But we have a galaxy with billions of planets and billions of years. Plus a cosmic web of super-super-clusters of other galaxies. A staggering amount of planets. The basic compounds are everywhere.

How do you know that anything probably will happen? (and I presume you meant "anything possible")

There is a field of math that does this. But we have seen evidence in the lab of many interesting replicating compounds which are used to build basic life. Since we don't yet have all the answers a probability cannot be made but it isn't impossible. Every year there are more advances in the basics of early life and pre-life compounds that begin to replicate and why.
It has reasonable probability, evidence is demonstrating that, but we see life has formed which shows it was probable enough that given a few billion years, water, sun, proper temperature, atmosphere, it will happen.

Some things are too unlikely to happen before the universe dies. particles do appear in and out of existence. Everywhere, constantly. An entire atom, a nucleus and electron popping in and out already attached would be much more rare. Quadrillions of atoms all appearing in one place to properly construct a human would effectively be impossible. It could happen in quantum mechanical rules given maybe 10^100^100^100 years.
Particles follow the probability laws.

It is good that the chemicals for life exist and work the way they do but it is just a hypothesis that basic RNA formed first and evolved into DNA, but it sounds like you believe it anyway.

I believe that is what the evidence is currently pointing to. There may be a pre-cursor to RNA. There have been many new findings to support RNA-DNA but it's still being worked on. Frontier science takes time and often finds new lines of evidence to follow, like what happened with the pandemic and people thought it was a conspiracy because they don't understand how science works and the doctors didn't say "currently evidence points to this", and then change it when new evidence comes in.
Established science does not change, it expands and gets more details.

If you don't know something then that is the answer. I'm getting the vibe that you don't want to believe any of the science on early life because it conflicts with your beliefs. What I would do is learn about the science, from the actual scientists (not apologetic reworkings) and try to understand where they are and what is known and make your choices that way. A God being real does not rely on abiogenesis not being a naturally occurring phenomenon?

So billions and trillions and maybes mean that, for sure chemicals evolved into life.

It means life forming is definitely a complex process and would take billions of attempts in billions of places for billions of years. But we have exactly that, and that is why life was able to form.

If I wanted to show by science that God exists I would need a viable hypothesis based on evidence, etc but I don't want to do that.

You cannot. People have tried and it's never happened. But at least you understand evidence.

 

[joelr]

True, we don't know, but your faith says natural forces has to be to way and my faith says God made life forms and gave life.

No. I don't use faith because it's a flawed way to know what is true. So I follow what evidence demonstrates. I haven't even seen ANY evidence for deism never mind theism, which through evidence shows to be a trending mythology. However science has vast information on abiogenesis. It's not solved but papers come out every year with new findings. They are closing the gap.


Now if we had no evidence at all, like in the dark ages, why would I conclude something we don't have evidence for was the cause?






It is becoming clear to me that your insistance on changing language and repeatedly calling evidence " faith" (despite that you probably quite confidently tell those who don't know that the Earth is round, the sun is a star using fusion, germs make us ill, we are made of atoms...all based on good EVIDENCE, not faith) and you haven't made a rational argument as to why evidence is faith (doesn't likely exist) so that leaves a psychological motive.


There is no other reason I know to fail to respect basic concepts and personal epistemologies of other people.






"


The RNA World hypothesis got a big boost in 2009. Chemists led by John Sutherland at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom reported that they had discovered that relatively simple precursor compounds called acetylene and formaldehyde could undergo a sequence of reactions to produce two of RNA's four nucleotide building blocks, showing a plausible route to how RNA could have formed on its own—without the need for enzymes—in the primordial soup. Critics, though, pointed out that acetylene and formaldehyde are still somewhat complex molecules themselves. That begged the question of where they came from.






For their current study, Sutherland and his colleagues set out to work backward from those chemicals to see if they could find a route to RNA from even simpler starting materials. They succeeded. In the current issue of Nature Chemistry, Sutherland's team reports that it created nucleic acid precursors starting with just hydrogen cyanide (HCN), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and ultraviolet (UV) light. What is more, Sutherland says, the conditions that produce nucleic acid precursors also create the starting materials needed to make natural amino acids and lipids. That suggests a single set of reactions could have given rise to most of life's building blocks simultaneously."

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

In the seventeenth century the doctrine of the motion of the earth was condemned by a Catholic tribunal. A hundred years ago the extension of time demanded by geological science distressed religious people, Protestant and Catholic. Galileo said that the earth moves and that the sun is fixed, the Inquisition said that the earth is fixed and that the sun moves.






Forcing reality to fit into a storybook myth is even worse when you employ denial about the known effectiveness of the scientific method and a rational methodology.


The thinking that gave us all sciences, knowledge of physics, medicines, knowledge of germs, all technology....a world where you don't die from an infected cut or bad tooth, the computer you write on, you compare the thinking that produced that with belief in a mythic book. One belief system gave us the technical, medical and scientific revolution. The other gave us more of the same books with different rules and some say the others have the wrong book.


Wow, great, yay faith.

The trinity is and is not alone.

First it's an older concept, another syncretism likely, not as direct at least.


The Trimūrti is the trinity of supreme divinity in Hinduism, in which the cosmic functions of creation, preservation, and destruction are personified as a triad of deities.


But also it is just made up by people. Obviously so is scripture but trinity came later. 4 centuries later.






"Neither the word “Trinity” nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”"






The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Hebrew Scriptures and the implications of the need to interpret the biblical teaching to Greco-Roman religions seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word, or Logos, be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being. An alternative solution was to interpret Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes of the self-disclosure of the one God but not as distinct within the being of God itself. The first tendency recognized the distinctness among the three, but at the cost of their equality and hence of their unity (subordinationism). The second came to terms with their unity, but at the cost of their distinctness as “persons” (modalism). The high point of these conflicts was the so-called Arian controversy in the early 4th century. In his interpretation of the idea of God, Arius sought to maintain a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of that oneness, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father. It was not until later in the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons.


The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the Son is “of the same substance [homoousios] as the Father,” even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit. Over the next half century, St. Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since. It is accepted in all of the historic confessions of Christianity, even though the impact of the Enlightenment decreased its importance in some traditions.

Trinity | Definition, Theology, & History | Britannica

Trinity, in Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity is considered to be one of the central Christian affirmations about God. Learn more about the history and evolution of the doctrine.

www.britannica.com

Now, how you think that solves the ridiculousness of reality is just a trinity of beings????? That is actually WAY more absurd. The concept of one indivisible substance at the base of reality, that cannot be divided is part of Islamic theology and is some of the best ideas for a God. That is what the word means, a single, undivisible reality. It's a Western concept. The Trinity is clearly a human attempt to solve issues with scripture that doesn't make sense and is copied from Greek religion anyways.


If a trio as the literal foundation of reality, everything, then it cannot have attributes like "holy" spirit. There isn't anything to compare it to, unholy or notholy isn't a thing? A God is infinite, it isn't hanging out with a spirit and his son and that is the sum total of reality until more creation?

If God was in timelessness then forever means nothing.

No time = no consciousness, no anything happening. You are correct, nothing is happening.

The deist God is living and personal because, it's creations, are. It is a theistic God.

First, that isn't deism then. A deism isn't involved with it's creations.

Theism is unproven, unlikely, has no evidence and looks to be just another mythical idea people came up with. It exists only in stories.

 

[joelr]

The spontaneous remission theory doesn't explain how the tubes were removed. The simplest explanation is that the patient reported what actually happened.

When you have a story that involves the supernatural you have 3 components:
It is true
The person telling it was mistaken
It's a lie

The evidence has to be strong enough to rule out or overwhelm the other two before you go to it's true.
You don't just believe what people are saying. If you do then guess what, Jesus is back:

The Messiah: meet the Australian man who says he's Jesus and his followers |​

and yup, he has answers to why he isn't doing miracles right now, he's got it all covered. So you must be happy, Jesus is back.


Can you think of any way tubes can be removed from a person or is tubes being removed an automatic proof of the supernatural?
Could a nurse do it, someone else, a nurse did it by mistake, he actually WAS HEALED right, so maybe while being drugged up on sedatives and Morphine his condition improved and they removed his tubes and he imagined he was healed by Jesus

OR, he could be a great guy, he could be reliable but he simply decided to tell a Jesus story. People justify this lie because they think it supports religion.
He made it up.

Because the mortality rates for any cancer, is alway met. If 100 people have stage 4 lung cancer, and the rate is 70% then around 70 of them will not survive. Always. So no deity is healing people on a significant scale.


The U.N. reports 25,000 deaths every day due to starvation, 10,000 are children. If some monster deity is healing a few people here and there and ignoring these 10,000 children, every day, it's an evil deity.

Losing 25,000 to Hunger Every Day | United Nations

During the past two decades, population growth, improvement in incomes and diversification of diets have steadily increased the demand for food. Prior to 2000, food prices were in decline, largely through record harvests. At the same time, however, public and private investment in agriculture...

www.un.org

This is terrible. But one random dude, he was worth doing some magic healing for? Bunch of nonsense.

 

[Ebionite]

You don't just believe what people are saying.

I said that there has to be a reason to disbelieve them.

So you must be happy, Jesus is back.

I have reason to be skeptical - there was a warning about that.

Can you think of any way tubes can be removed from a person or is tubes being removed an automatic proof of the supernatural?

There was also the patient's story and and the lack of an explanation from the doctors.

Could a nurse do it, someone else, a nurse did it by mistake, he actually WAS HEALED right, so maybe while being drugged up on sedatives and Morphine his condition improved and they removed his tubes and he imagined he was healed by Jesus

It's not realistic to think that a nurse would make a mistake like that and the doctors would be in the dark about it. Also, it was a complete healing, not just an improvement.

OR, he could be a great guy, he could be reliable but he simply decided to tell a Jesus story. People justify this lie because they think it supports religion.
He made it up.

Unlikely since my friend knew him and he didn't suggest that he was a liar.

Because the mortality rates for any cancer, is alway met. If 100 people have stage 4 lung cancer, and the rate is 70% then around 70 of them will not survive. Always. So no deity is healing people on a significant scale.

I have no explanation as to why the guy was different from anyone else - except that where I live is what I would call a high strangeness area. UFOs , missing time, ghosts, aliens, etc. There was also another healing story here, but I only heard about it as hearsay.

The U.N. reports 25,000 deaths every day due to starvation, 10,000 are children. If some monster deity is healing a few people here and there and ignoring these 10,000 children, every day, it's an evil deity.

Best not to judge without knowing all the facts.

 

[joelr]

I can however point out that your faith in science goes too far if you think that all their explanations have to be true.

Science doesn't make that claim. It looks for all available evidence, tests it and then trys to debunk it and waits for others to duplicate the tests.
Frontier science is always changing, it's supposed to.

How do you know original stories were tweaked?

The historical evidence is vast. Literary evidence, styleistic and many other forms. Sometimes we find mentions of older versions in letters that are different. Why you don't study the history of your religion is baffling to me. I'm studying it and I;m not a Christian. I just ordered -God: A Body
by a Hebrew Bible professor at Exiter U.

Doesn't thousands of years show that whoever made the prophecy knew what they were doing over long periods of time and did not just say stuff like, the sun will come up tomorrow.

No. The prophecies are vague and often WRITTEN AFTER THE FACT. Also many many things Yahweh claimed did not happen. So you are cherry picking your favorite. Hundreds of things Yahweh said would happen did not and can never.

over 200 right here:

Skeptic's Annotated Bible / Quran / Book of Mormon

skepticsannotatedbible.com

1. God says that the Israelites will destroy all of the peoples they encounter. But he was unable to keep his promise. 7:1, 7:23-24, 31:3
2. God promises to give Joshua all of the land that his "foot shall tread upon." He says that none of the people he encounters will be able to resist him. But later we find that God didn't keep his promise, and that many tribes withstood Joshua's attempt to steal their land. 1:3-5, 3:10, 15:63, 16:10, 17:12-13, 17:17-18, 21:43-45
3. God promised many times that he would drive out all the inhabitants of the lands they encountered. But he failed to keep that promise 1:19, 1:21-27, 3:1-5
4. This verse predicts that there shall be five cities in Egypt that speak the Canaanite language. But that language was never spoken in Egypt, and it is extinct now. 19:18
5. Isaiah 53 is probably the most often used "prophecy" that is claimed by Christian apologists to refer to Jesus. But the context indicates otherwise. The "suffering servant" that is referred to here is Israel, not Jesus. 53:1-12 also:

• Jesus of Nazareth (the New Testament and Christian tradition) no Hebrew scholar agrees with that
• Rabbi Akiva (y. Shekalim 5:1)[9]
• Moses (b. Sotah 14a)[10]
• The Jewish Messiah (but not Jesus): (Targum Jonathan,[11] b. Sanhedrin 98a-b,[12] Ruth Rabbah 5:6,[13] Midrash Tanchuma Toldot 14,[14] Yalkut Shimoni 476,[15] Midrash Tehillim 2:7,[16] Maimonides[17])
• Jeremiah (Saadia Gaon)[18]

I imagine people think they see Nostradamus prophecies coming true. I have heard a couple of prophecies but nothing that has come true as far as I remember.

Some things he said did.
"But Nostradamus posthumously triumphed over his detractors. His quatrains, published in 1555 as Les Prophéties, have never gone out of print and have been claimed to have predicted the execution of Charles I, the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon and Hitler, the shooting of JFK, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the 9/11 attacks, the 2015 mass murders in Paris, even the abdication of King Charles III (of which more later)."



But like the Bible there are many incorrect predictions and some are vague and interpreted to match an event. He had some hits as well, if you cherry pick his work he looks impressive. Same thing people do with the Bible.

There are no prophecies in any religion or otherwise that impress people who look at them without a belief bias and apologetics.

 

[Audie]

You probably misunderstood my post.

So what did you mean.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Were you thinking of the recurrent laryngeal nerve? Look at where the vagus arises in the brainstem and where the branch that enervates the larynx travels into the thorax and under the aortic arch before returning to the neck.

View attachment 82708

14 Of The Greatest Human Body Flaws
The Human Body's Greatest Flaws In Evolution, From Sweat Glands To Eyelids

The atheistic argument? Is that when the theist tells me about his gods and I tell him that I don't believe him?

Atheism doesn't rely on physics at all.

There is zero evidence for that claim.

Also, DNA is not the "heart of life." Viruses contain nucleic acids, but aren't alive. Life is metabolism - chemistry producing a slow, flameless burn through the oxidation of calories (from the Latin calor meaning heat).

Nor is DNA properly called information. It's form. Information exists in conscious minds, not outside of them consciousness, and as the word implies, represents the apprehension of form which becomes information for a mind. Form becomes information when the form is transformed into conscious content.

The agnostic atheist doesn't make that claim, and neither should you or anybody else. He just doesn't need gods either to understand his world or to feel comfortable in it.

Dialectic (debate) ends with the last plausible, unrefuted argument. If you can't falsify a scientific (falsifiable) claim, that's generally because the claim is correct. Correct ideas cannot be successfully rebutted, which is the basis of both courtroom trials and scientific peer review. The last argument standing prevails.

Another trait of correct ideas is successfully predicting outcomes as all scientific laws and theories do but no religious (unfalsifiable) claims ever do.

That is exactly what I had in mind. Great minds ... LOL

 

[SkepticThinker]

I said I did not do that.

You say that you don't but you demonstrate that you do.

Also I said that if the God one is praying to is real and makes decisions, you cannot treat it or prayer as a thing to be studied, like a rock.

Why not?

Also prayer could depend on the one who is praying and how they do it and with what attitude etc and not be something like the Buddhist prayer wheels, where you just hit it and pray that way.

This is something that would have to be demonstrated.

Too many variables which cannot be accounted for by science, but all you have to say is that you trust the science.

So you throw science aside and declare God did it. Well, sometimes. When prayers are answered. When they're not God didn't do it.

Science is just a method of observing, recording, measuring, testing, and replicating data. So when you say "too many variables which cannot be accounted for by science" what you're actually saying is that you don't want to test your claims. If you did, you'd submit it to scientific scrutiny instead of just throwing your hands up and declaring "too many variables," without apparently realizing that scientific studies can be done to control and isolate the numerous variables involved. I mean, if we went with your view of science, we'd have to throw our hands up in the air about climate science because well, too many variables! Who knows!

Your method appears to be to ignore all relevant information and just declare that the god you believe in exists and answers prayers (sometimes).

You can never say that there is no life somewhere else.

True and life somewhere else isn't even a falsifiable proposition, but that does not stop science from looking for it.

The existence of the animal kingdom s is a demonstration that our universe can sustain, at least, carbon-based life.

I don't think God ignores my prayers and I should be thanking God in faith for whatever answer I get.

So, you think God answers your prayers, except when he doesn't?
And when he doesn't you thank him "in faith" for not answering your prayer? Or maybe answering your prayer.
You've just described chance, my friend.

If it is what I have requested I thank God in faith even though the answer may have just happened that way anyway.
So it is a matter of faith and believing Jesus is the Lord of my life.

And we're all the way back at faith again. Unjustified belief that your prayer will be answered. Or not answered.

I have been saying all along that my subjective justification is not the justification that you demand before you believe.
I hope I accept whatever God gives with thanksgiving, and trust that He has given it.
There are imo however, good reasons for the acceptance of faith even if they are not the high standards that you demand.

Judging from what you've said in this post, your justification for faith appears to be that you like it. It does not appear to be evidenced-based.

 

[SkepticThinker]

We both know that we can understand how things work with bringing in a God into it.
We should both know that being able to understand how things work with bringing in a God into it, does not mean that there is or was no God involved in the creation of those things so that they could and do work as they do.

This was in response to, "You're still not getting it. You need to show that Gods are required. Nobody needs to show that gods aren't required."

You've just repeated your earlier claim rather than responding to what I've said.

You are assuming that science can tell us how things came to be when nobody was there to see how things came to be.

I don't need to assume it. It's how we solve murders that we weren't witness to. It's how we know the age of the earth. It's how we know organisms evolve over time. Etc., etc., etc.

I don't ignore the point that my explanation doesn't provide any explanatory power. I'm not wanting to provide explanatory power.

You don't care if your explanation doesn't explain anything? Well, I do.

I can however point out that your faith in science goes too far if you think that all their explanations have to be true.

Please do. So far you've just claimed it.

How do you know original stories were tweaked?

From reading them.

Doesn't thousands of years show that whoever made the prophecy knew what they were doing over long periods of time and did not just say stuff like, the sun will come up tomorrow.

Not to me. To me, if a prediction takes thousands of years to sort of come true, it was a terrible prediction to start with.

I imagine people think they see Nostradamus prophecies coming true. I have heard a couple of prophecies but nothing that has come true as far as I remember.

They certainly do. There are people who believe that Nostradamus predicted the rise of Hitler and the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11. What would you say to those people?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I can see where you might think that I was saying that complexity of design show that a designer is needed initially instead of just chance, but I was not saying that originally, it was Antony Flew who was saying that for the genetic code since the alternative answers were chance or designer.
I was saying that the data in and used by the code showed a designer,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, simple or complex had nothing to do with it.
See post #5,582
However imo complexity of design does move the pointer away from chance and to a designer more in the sense that the initial creation of some things probably would not go very well or lead to a better chance of survival unless a whole system was set up and not just parts of it for no good reason.

So above you basically said that your argument is not the "complexity of design" shows that a designer is needed. And then right underneath it you say that complexity of design does point to a designer.

The whole time you're saying that complexity indicates design.

The second guy.

Why?

Human design is purpose built for one thing from the beginning and God design through evolution manages to get there but takes some turns along the way, through a variety of types of the same design.

To compare the 2 and call God design through evolution inferior is just not looking at the bigger picture of what evolution does.

You agreed with me that the second guy in the scenario would be the better designer.
And then here you want to claim that the first guy is the better designer.

But I suppose your argument might work for young earth creationism.



Yes



So you say "Gods, that's unbelievable, I can't believe in gods without more evidence."
With that reasoning, the Thor one is from incredulity also initially.
If you say "Gods, I believe in them, let me see which gods might be real".
That might bring up other reasons why you might accept or reject Thor.

That's not an argument from personal incredulity any more than your lack of belief in fairies is an argument from personal incredulity.

Logical fallacies seem a bit ridiculous at times. But someone has said they are logical fallacies so does that mean we all have to bow to that?

If you want to be a rational and reasonable thinker ... yes!

OK, good. And from this site: The Structure and Function of DNA - Molecular Biology of the Cell - NCBI Bookshelf.
The genetic information stored in an organism's DNA contains the instructions for all the proteins the organism will ever synthesize.

But it has so much more information than just that imo. That is the start.

Please respond to what I said.

I don't see the existence of the DNA molecule that is the problem, it is the whole idea that a molecule could carry and use information for the replication of a body and it's functions and what it intuitively know to do to survive etc.
This whole thing is very complex of course and awesome, but it is the storage and use of the information which is really amazing imo.
We do that in our head somehow, that is amazing also, and the chemical way, without a consciousness in the molecules is at least as amazing,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and how it does it and got this function in bodies is a mystery imo and would have needed a designer.

You're stuck in an analogy you can't get out of.

 

[PureX]

The whole time you're saying that complexity indicates design.

Complexity does indicate design. But in an indirect way. It's actually the specificity of the result that indicates the presence of the element of design. The more precise and predictable the result, the more design control will have been required to produce it. And the term 'complexity' refers to an observed increased in the specificity of the result.

If you want to be a rational and reasonable thinker ... yes!

Everyone is a rational and reasonable thinker whether you happen to understand and agree with their reasoned rationale or not.

 

[joelr]

I said that there has to be a reason to disbelieve them.

Yes, the reason has to overwhelm the possibility of:
1) they were misunderstanding something
2) they lied

you haven't given anything to indicate you have ruled out other possibilities.

I have reason to be skeptical - there was a warning about that.

But you haven't investigated, talked to new Jesus and asked him why he's back despite warnings that there will be no more. HE may have an explanation.
Also with the other supernatural story, there also have been warnings. There are millions of hoax, fraud and plain lies told by all types of people. Even the most sincere people will tell bold faced lies in the name of promoting a religion because they justify it being good for the movement.
So there is no reason to trust stories without evidence, ever.

There was also the patient's story and and the lack of an explanation from the doctors.

For starters, who said? Did you speak with the doctors? Did you read his medical records where doctors reported a lack of explanation? Or did you hear anecdotal retellings from someone or someplace?

It's not realistic to think that a nurse would make a mistake like that and the doctors would be in the dark about it. Also, it was a complete healing, not just an improvement.

Was the case studies by a scientific team? Was it written about is a medical journal? Tubes? You mean IV tubes? You can pull those out.

Unlikely since my friend knew him and he didn't suggest that he was a liar.

Believers will lie for the religion no problem. Happens all the time. Again, maybe he thinks that is what happened. IF he was truly ill he would be on many drugs including opiates, sedatives and other. Could have hallucinated the entire thinsg and nurses took out the tubes. Then he claims doctors "didn't know". Where is the case study?

I have no explanation as to why the guy was different from anyone else - except that where I live is what I would call a high strangeness area. UFOs , missing time, ghosts, aliens, etc.

All made up folk tales. People love to make crap up about those subjects. People eat up fake media about all those subjects.

There was also another healing story here, but I only heard about it as hearsay.


Best not to judge without knowing all the facts.

Again, 25,000 people die every day. 10,000 children. Of hunger. And you propose a God is busy with hospitals. Absurd.

The probability that this in one way or another is a bunch of mis-information is so much higher than Jesus showed up and healed him and took out his tubes (why?). Someone should give Jesus the U.N. article about all the children starving.