Transgenderism

[SkepticThinker]

They were hunted to extinction. It’s the paleontogists that can’t explain how they are extinct, I think you’ll find they disagree with different theories. Evolution can be considered similar to one of the languages given by God at the Tower of Babel. All it does is confuse people, particularly atheists.

Hunted to extinction? Huh? That's a new one. By whom, and how?

The Tower of Babel is not how different languages came about. Good grief.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The whole article was referring to all homosexuality including pederasty. Yeah I once saw a documentary about ‘dancing boys’ in Afghanistan, I didn’t know it was widespread. That’s another oddity.

Yeah, except that isn't homosexuality.

 

[Apostle John]

Yeah, except that isn't homosexuality.

Wikipedia: Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Nah, it applies to everyone. Especially the person hedging their bets on the one specific god they've chosen out of thousands.

Seems it applies mostly to Christians of a faith so weak it must offemd their god that someone believes as a matter of afterlife insurance.

 

[Apostle John]

Nah, it applies to everyone. Especially the person hedging their bets on the one specific god they've chosen out of thousands.

Nope: This was Pascals intent:

Misunderstanding of the wager​

Pascal's intent was not to provide an argument to convince atheists to believe, but (a) to show the fallacy of attempting to use logical arguments to prove or disprove God, and (b) to persuade atheists to sinlessness, as an aid to attaining faith ("it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks").

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Wikipedia: Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender.

Where does that say children?
This is what you're talking about.

Pederasty - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Pederasty or paederasty (US: /ˈpɛdəræsti/ or UK: /ˈpiːdəræsti/) is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a boy.[1] The term pederasty is primarily used to refer to historical practices of certain cultures, particularly ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

In most countries today such relationships are illegal. The local age of consent determines whether a person isconsidered legally competent to consent to sexual acts, and whether such contact is child sexual abuse or statutory rape. An adult engaging in sexual activity with a minor may be considered abusive by medical authorities for a variety of reasons, including the age of the minor, the likelihood of the minor developing one or more mental disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, physical injury to the minor, and the minor's propensity for further victimization in adulthood.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Nope: This was Pascals intent:

Misunderstanding of the wager​

Pascal's intent was not to provide an argument to convince atheists to believe, but (a) to show the fallacy of attempting to use logical arguments to prove or disprove God, and (b) to persuade atheists to sinlessness, as an aid to attaining faith ("it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks").

But you just said it applies to atheists.
So what is it?

 

[metis]

The Flood of Noah laid down the fossil record, that’s the only rational explanation.

A child could arrange bones and skulls in a line, in order of size and say ‘hey look they got bigger so we must have evolved from them’ without showing the actual process, only allowing imagination to run wild so as to assert this must have happened.

It's not even remotely rational as if the above were true then the dinosaurs would be on top and the smaller organisms lower.

IMO, the Flood narrative's strength is as an allegory to counter the earlier and much more widespread polytheistic Babylonian account, thus it's the moral lessons that permeates the narrative that is something that would involve teaching, both then and now. This is the ancient art of storytelling was used extensively in cultures throughout the world, especially in societies whereas most people couldn't read nor write.

 

[Sand Dancer]

The scripture has our species starting off as dirt.

Maybe that is why conservatives think people are naturally bad.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Nope: This was Pascals intent:

Misunderstanding of the wager​

Pascal's intent was not to provide an argument to convince atheists to believe, but (a) to show the fallacy of attempting to use logical arguments to prove or disprove God, and (b) to persuade atheists to sinlessness, as an aid to attaining faith ("it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks").

I know what it is. And its garbage. As I just pointed out.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

I tend to lean towards a Big Bang-Big Crunch-Big Bang-Big Crunch sort of thing, a literal Eternal Recurrence.
Spiritually, I've had some spiritual experiences But I have no idea what they really were or mean, so I tend to leave that off to the side.

You can send me a private message if you want to discuss your spiritual experiences. I'll listen to you and offer advice if I can.

 

[Father Heathen]

I can't speak for anyone else, but it's difficult for me to take you seriously when you spout off your beliefs as if they were facts.

What he doesn't realize or understand is that his mindset is what contributes to the decline of his religion.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

From memory I think you said something along the lines of you’d butt in at my judgment in the afterlife and put in a good word. That’s more nonsense.

Not if you can't rebut it.

1. I’m a Christian, you’re an atheist. The Bible clearly states you won’t be able to influence my judgment as mine will be at the bema seat, being a Christian, yours however will be at the Great White Throne. They will be distinctly different judgments.

I have no reason to believe that. Neither do you.

I’ve always ignored philosophy not having any interest or seeing any point to it.

More's the pity.

[Dinosaurs] were hunted to extinction.

No, they weren't. Hunted by what? The insectivores?

The meteor strike near the Yucatan is only one theory not all palaeontology can agree on.

It's not an issue for paleontologists to judge, and it wouldn't matter if there were a few dissenters. The scientific consensus regarding a large asteroid strike causing a mass extinction that killed the large dinosaurs, laying down a thin layer of iridium over the entire earth, and leaving a large impact crater off of Yucatan is that it is settled science.

“A sudden cooling” from that size of meteor strike would kill all land animals with the devastation it would cause. You will have to guess better than that to give your evolution theory credence.

Did you already forget that you've demonstrated that you don't understand the theory? Do you know what that does to your credibility when you then make claims about what evolution can and cannot do? I understand that philosophy has no place in your life, but in the philosophy of argumentation (rhetoric), there is the phrase ethos, which refers to the meta-messages a speaker or writer sends his audience in addition to the explicit meaning of his argument, such as does he seem knowledgeable, does he seem sincere, does he seem credible, does he seem trustworthy, does he seem competent, does he show good judgment, does he seem to have a hidden agenda, is he more interested in convincing with impartial argument or persuading with emotive language or specious argumentation, and the like. What do you suppose that your ethos/meta-message is?

The Flood of Noah laid down the fossil record, that’s the only rational explanation.

For me, the most rational explanation for the flood story is that it was written to explain the finding of marine fossils on the highest mountain tops. Why else write so unflattering an account of the deity, which is depicted as both immoral and ignorant for blaming its creation for its own engineering deficiencies, cruelly drowning nearly all terrestrial life when it was only one species that was in its crosshairs, and attempting to repopulate the earth using the same breeding stock. That never happened, but if it had, yikes! Imagine that our universe were actually run by that.

A child could arrange bones and skulls in a line, in order of size and say ‘hey look they got bigger so we must have evolved from them’ without showing the actual process, only allowing imagination to run wild so as to assert this must have happened.

Of course they could. Being children and poor thinkers, they also could have called that evidence for God. Did you have a point? Is this intended to be an argument against evolutionary theory? If so, how do you imagine it rebuts or falsifies it?

Pascal's intent was not to provide an argument to convince atheists to believe

His intent was to make everybody a Christian.

but (a) to show the fallacy of attempting to use logical arguments to prove or disprove God

And he did this by concocting a fallacious argument that smart people later refuted for him? By this reasoning, we can say that the flood story exists to show that claims about a global flood are easily refuted.

and (b) to persuade atheists to sinlessness, as an aid to attaining faith

That's an argument intended to convert non-Christians to Christianity using a specious probability argument.

That wager really only applies to sinners and not the saved.

The wager applied to everybody, but the argument is flawed. As I explained, you are gambling believing in Pascal's god. First you risk throwing away countless hours and dollars on a false religion and a non-existent god, and then, if there is an afterlife and a judgment day, you risk being judged postmortem by different rules than you assumed. There's no free lunch here for any of us. You make your choices and you take your chances whichever way you chose.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

What he doesn't realize or understand is that his mindset is what contributes to the decline of his religion.

That's what makes it so grand amd delicious. Why does the Anti-Christ even need to bother showing up at all when so many legions of Christians are doing his work for him?

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

What he doesn't realize or understand is that his mindset is what contributes to the decline of his religion.

That's what makes it so grand amd delicious. Why does the Anti-Christ even need to bother showing up at all when so many legions of Christians are doing his work for him?

Most Christians don't need any help causing people to turn away from God and reject Christianity because they do a good job of it on their own.

 

[metis]

Most Christians don't need any help causing people to turn away from God and reject Christianity because they do a good job of it on their own.

Especially the fundamentalist movement historically, as so many of them tend to be anti-science and very intolerant of any beliefs other than their own. I know as I experienced as such in a church I grew up in and left in my mid-20's.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Especially the fundamentalist movement historically, as so many of them tend to be anti-science and very intolerant of any beliefs other than their own. I know as I experienced as such in a church I grew up in and left in my mid-20's.

It really says a lot when even Christians cease calling themselves Christians in an effort to separate and distance themselves from those bigoted, hyoocritcal loonies.

 

[Trailblazer]

If there is an afterlife and we're ever going to figure out what that afterlife is, it will be people like you leading our investigations. Your position earns more credence than anything anyone asserts based on scripture or doctrine.

I fully agree. Scripture offers only vague notions of hat an afterlife will be like, but psychic mediums who have actually communicated with spirits who exist in the spiritual world know a whole lot more.

 

[metis]

It really says a lot when even Christians cease calling themselves Christians in an effort to separate and distance themselves from those bigoted, hyoocritcal loonies.

According to historians, when such attitudes flare up as we've seen over the last decade with the "religious right", it catches up to them and church attendance drops even in denominations that aren't fundamentalists. Even though my denomination [Catholic-- I'm on the lunatic left fringe btw] is not fundamentalist, there's plenty of very rigid elderly especially [more men than women] that very much are a part of the "religious right". Attendance has really dropped over the last decade, and only part of it can be attributed to covid.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

According to historians, when such attitudes flare up as we've seen over the last decade with the "religious right", it catches up to them and church attendance drops even in denominations that aren't fundamentalists. Even though my denomination [Catholic-- I'm on the lunatic left fringe btw] is not fundamentalist, there's plenty of very rigid elderly especially [more men than women] that very much are a part of the "religious right". Attendance has really dropped over the last decade, and only part of it can be attributed to covid.

It's been dwindling for a couple of decades now so covid i would say is largely not even a factor. Christians, especially Evangelicals, have just been shrinking their membership largely on their own efforts. Add in some sex scandals from those who are hyperobsessed with the sex of others and why would anyone find the Church appealing?