philh

"One thing I do believe is those who do not have the HS have ZERO possibility of understanding Him. " Well if the Christian message is so important then maybe it should be more probable than zero to understand it,even for those without the HS?

Problem is he doesnt seem to hand out the same advice to everyone. Lots of people have done lots of contrary things believing they were guided by either the holy spirit or some other equally vague concpet. How are you able to disntinguish the holy spritis voice in your head to any other thought that pops in? Why doesnt the holy spirit go and whisper in the fundies ear? Why didnt the holy spirit tell the Pope he was going to give the Catholic church a bad rap for its treatment of Bruno and Galileo? Do you really think a text that needs a ghost to interpret it for you,an invicible ghost no less, is reaally a text that should be the foundation for modern living?

And who is to define what is the correct understanding, you?

A very good quote from Voltaire Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities So Ill ask you again, perhaps you can reply this time, why do you believe in something as absurd as "What the Bleep"?

"I was answering steve's question of "what justification would a non-theist use for slavery?". Ok so perhaps you can answer my question: can you give me an example of people using their dis belief in god during the slavery debates that took place in the 19th century to inspire their defence of slavery? Please note it is not sufficient to provide examples of atheists defending slavery, but defending slavery becuase of their atheism. The examples you gave before are all irrelevant, they are simply examples of people using silly pseudo science to come to silly pseduo scientific conclusions. Thats nothing to do with whhat we are debating. The reason I ask this is becuase many people claim thhat atheims leads to immorlaity and Christianity leads to morality. I think this is not the case and whilst some Christians are very moral , Wilberforce being one of them, Chrsitianity does no more lead to morality than any other belief or disbelief.

Im glad we agree that many Christians used the bible the bible to justify slavery. I wonder if at the time, of the 19th century slavery debate, you can give us some counter examles of people using the non existence of god as a defence of slavery, just to show us that there was a balance of beliefs?

Yes Setev quit debating me as well, but not because we were going round in circiles but because he ojbected me using science in my arguments(it happens to invalidate most religious claims). However why reference "What the Bleep"? that film is just as silly as the bible.

"BigTexan said that these people were ignorant. By the standard of the day, they were learned men. " Perhpas they were, but by our standards they were ignorant. That is what is relevant because many people still believe that this ancient book is a unique source of wisdom. If they were learnned in their own society thats relevant to those people in those times , but if we are being asked to follow them we need to assess whether they were ignorant by our standards and the answer tho that is a clear yes. Your points about communism may be true but what has this to do with this debate?

Communism and socialism are economic systems, they are not necesailry godles nor are they religions . They are very bad failed conomic systems but that is not the point. You maybe interestd to learn that many socialists are actualy Christian and believe Christ preahced socialism. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_socialism

"I'm surprised that Moses could even speak a coherent sentence, let alone chronicle it in such a manner that it could be passed down through centuries of time" The fact that story gets passed down through time does not make it true. The Koran has been passed down through time, is that true? Also no serious biblical scholar, be they theist or not, believes Moses wrote the OT. One particular reason for that is that he dies in it!

i think there is a false dichotomy in this argument. There is a distinction between whether one has the right to behave in a certain way and whether one should behave in a certan way. If a boss fires his empoyee on his birthday, the boss is acting within his rights but most people would proabably agree this was not what he should have done. Simlarly if you campaign politiclly to make sure that all workers who are made redundant are told on their birhtdays, well yes, you would be acting within your rights. But others are acting within their rights to tell you should not follow such a campaign. So it is with the religion debate. many religious and non religious people want religion out of politics for various reasons. But most of these poeple do not advocate banning religious advocacy within politics, they just oppose its voice. The two are not the same. To oppose a religiously inspired law is not the same as oposing ones right to advocate a religiously inspired law. By claiming those that oppose you are taking away your democaractic rights is simply false. Furthermore you mistake democracy for freedom. As i have said before democracy is a necessary condition for freedom but they are not the same. If a country votes to ban all religious expression is it more free even if this was the will of the majority? Some things can be consistent with democracy and inconcistent with freedom. You have your right to your personal definition of marriage. Heres mine: when two adults commit to each for life, mostly inspired by their love for one another. To deny the rights of two people who love one another becuase they are gay I think is cruel. You may have the right to be cruel but you are still cruel.

"No, I'm not "ultimately" saying anything about the unexplainable or "imperfect"!! But if I can't learn the "why" behind something right away, I may as well learn something from it, and in the case of the symbolic blind-spot, it seemed to fit the bill" If god exists we do not know his motives and so you cannot know whether your explantion of the blind spot is correct or not. What we can do is test the idea that humans beings are designed by a pefect desginer. The idea of a designer comes from the idea that there is not complete chaos in the universe. Some attribute this to natural causes, others to super natural causes. Now lets assume there is a super natural cause, is this super natural designer perfect or imperfect ?- we can observe his handiwork. If we see imperfections we cannot conclude that he/she is perect. Of course its possible there is a reason for that imperfection, but we can never know that. All we can do is observe the imperfection and say the observed facts are not consitent with the idea that if there is a god he is perfect. Thats all we can ever do with knowledge, do the facts support the ideas? The idea that god is perfect is not consitent with the facts.You have no reason to conclude god is perfect or even good. "I agree with your first statement 100%... in cases where God has not given direct revelation about a thing. I like the clock relativity example." Thats great your learning a bit about science and how we can tell what is true and what is not true. There is no such thing as absolute truth in science. There are only ideas which have subject themselves to falsification and shown not to be falsified. Let me give you another example: The idea the humans share a common ancestor with great apes can be falsified when we look at the genomes. Apes have one more chromosne pair than humans. If we desended form a common ancestor that chromosone must have fused, if we look through the genome and dont find the fused chromose this evolutionary theory is proved wrong. Scientists were not able to conduct this test until recently when human and chimp genomes were sequenced. Guess what they found? Sure enough the chromosone fusion was found just like the theory predicted it would be. for a fuller discusion of this i reccomend: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html "To learn about the supernatural [God, that is], we must depend on direct revelation from Him," im sorry but we cannot do this because we have no means to tell what revlations are really from him(if he exists) and what are not. If someone gets a revelations from god how do you know it is genuine? if you hear his voice, how do you know it is not your imagination? You have no way to tell this and so this cannot be used.

"We experience an objective, quantifiable, outside reality and a non-quantifiable inner experience as conscious beings. " This is really just a god of the gaps argument. We still dont know a lot about consciousness, why we have the emotions we have. But we are learning more all the time. We certainly do know why we feel a thrill for jumping out of planes. Its our fight or flight response kicking in pupming up the adrenaline. But why do some skydive and others not? The answer has been sugested that skydivers ( and our hang glisding/snowbaording etc etc cousins) have lower levels of monoamine oxydase this is an enzyme whcih breaks down doapmine in the brain. the less we have of this the more easily doapmine flows and so seek out thrilling stimulation. This has been further linked to a gene called the d4 dopamine receptor. Thrll seekers may be more likely to have this gene than those that play golf. Whether these exaplantions will become consensus remains to be seen, but this so called non objective world is becoming more objective all the time. Science is coming up with answers as to why we feel the things we do. Religion has never answered anything.religion is just superstition and whenever its silly ideas are shown to be wrong it tries to remanifest itself to aid its own survivial. But we are better off being like a good trader, who spots a mistake recognises it, cuts their losses and moves on; rather than a bad trader who holds on to a bad idea no matter what perhaps because they have too much invested in it to let go.

"After doing that, what exactly brought them to the conclusion that there is no God. " Well I can only speak for myself but my degree of belief in something is proprtional to the amount of verifiable evdiece for it. No evidence=no belief. There is no evidecen for god so I have no belief in god. I also read the bible in the light of two models, one it was written or inspired by a divine being and two that it was written by ignorant ancient men without any divine intervention. If you read the bible with this second model in mind you will find it is much more consistent with the facts than the first model. "The thing created judging the Creator? The standards by which you critique His work couldn't possibly match His. " Your views of god being great, perfect , loving or whatever are also a judgement. Just because you come to a positive judgement and I come to a negative one does not mean both opinions are not judgments. Even if we agree that super being created the universe that does not iin anyway way imply that he is perfect. "maybe you could look at the eye's "blind spot" as symbolic of man's blind spot in being able to fully comprehend God and his creation! " So lets get it straight, whenever you find something amazing about nature its evidence of god, whenever you find that something that is clearly imperfect in nature then you say its symbolic. Ultimatlley what you are saying is no matter what evidence you find around you will contort it to fit your dogma. Real truth comes from tesitng ideas and allowing them to be proved wrong if the evidence demands. For example relativity predicts moving clocks will tell time slower than stationary ones, if they dont then its wrong, pure and simple wrong. When we do the experiment we find that not only do the clocks run slower, they run exactly the amount slower predited by the theory. This is how we know things are true. Imagine if we said well if they run slower its true, but if they dont its also true. Where would that sort of thinking get us? It would get us nowehere, we would never know what is true and what is not. That is why when Christian thought was most dominant,the era was known as "The Dark Ages".

"I see God's wisdom all around me-- in the laws of nature, the order and structure and design in creation, for instance. " ok so why do we have a blind spot in our eyes,?a designer could do a better job than that. "I see God's wisdom throughout the bible in his words and his actions. " So why was it wise to plant the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden given he knew Adam and Eve would eat it, why not just not plant it? Why was it wise to kill all the first born Egyptians when he could have just killed the Pharoh? This is not a wise god this is a blood thirsty god. "I don't have access to the original pieces of papyrus, hide, etc. that the books which make up the bible were written on. The original documents are not available to us." Exactly there are no orginal documents. If the bible was so important, why didnt god provide some magical papyrus that was indestructible and never faded? Furthermore, the fact there are no original manuscripts mean we dont even know what the original story was.We don't knwo what the original bible says because we don't have any original manuscripts. I believe the oldest complete bibles (correct me if Im wrong) we have date back ot the 5th century, there is a copy of part of the OT that dates back to 464Ad in the British Museum. " is it written in a Hebraic sort of poetry, where not all concepts are literal, but is dramatizing the simple fact that God was the creator? I don't know! I believe that some day it will all be disclosed. But for now, I just don't have all the answers. I'm not afraid to say "I don't know.I don't believe that what science has discovered/uncovered in the way of evidence is necessarily incorrect! I just think it hasn't all been reconciled-- brought into focus-- yet. " Whether the days are literal days or metaphorcial days does not help your case. Science has shown that not only is the dating in the bible incorrect, but also the order of creation in the bible is also incorrecrt. Now if the bible gets the creation story wrong then why should we trust any of it? Let me ask you a question: what would you take as an example where a supposed historical text is wrong? just in principle, not the bible , not any partiular text, just a hypothetical example where you would be able to say this piece of historical text is demonstarated wrong by the evidence? It seems to me that there are no circumstannces when you would ever consider anything wrong, to you everything can always be reconciled even when you cant suggest how.

"I believe that the supernatural is beyond reason, not necessarily against reason. " and what is the difference? "Stars are light years away from the earth, no? If God intended the stars he put in existence to be seen from the earth, wouldn't they need to be given a kind of "apparent" age at their creation? " What you are saying is that the stars appear to be billions of years old but god simply made them appear that way rather than they are that way. With this logic you could prove the universe is only 5 minutes old , yes sure the universe appears to be more than 5 mintues old but god planted that evidence so it really is juts 5 minutes old. What you are asking us to do is to abandon everything the evidence is telling us simply because it does not coorespond with what the bible says. What you are effectivley saying is that god fakes evidence of an old universe to trick us into thinking the universe is old. Now if i were a theist i would say you are implying god is a liar. Furthermore its not just that the light from the stars is so far way, we also know that stars came before planets becuase of our models of our solar system formation which has been very well verified by experimental data. Planets form becasue of the gravity of the stars they orbit. No stars, no planets ... simple. Now how are you going to explain the existence of water and day and night before the existence fo the sun? "I have more confidence in God's wisdom than my own. " and how do you know what gods wisdom is? How do you know god is wise?

Communistm fell apart for many reason but the primrary one is that it is a far inferior economic mechanism to capitalism. Im not sure that has any relevance to the debate on gods exsitence. Well actually maybe it tells us that a large complicated thing (in this case an economy) does better without a central designer(the politburo) than with one. Selection and adpatation of competing entities (in this case firms) leads to more efficients units of productions. Sounds very much like evolution works better than design to me.

Literary interpretation , am I worng to assume that water exists before the sun? Am i wrong to assume that the stars were created after the Earth? you cant just state there are literary misinterpretations, you have to give your evidence. Where is it? You argument re the supernatural act of creation is really asking us to abandon all reason. The evidence suggests stars were created before the Earth and the bible says stars were created after the Earth. So the evidence suggests the bible is wrong. Now if you want to ignore the evidence then of course you can come to any conclusion you like. I can conclude the entire universe was created last tuesday and that a supernatural being implanted our memories and any other evidence of the universes age. basically one can conclude absoloutley anything if one allows for supernatural agency. A reasonalable aproach would be ask what is consitent with the available evidence and what is not. The bible is not consistent with the available evidence. "Aaah, but do you own a book written by God?" No i don't , Im sure you believe you do but thats just your say so. Effectively what you are saying is the bible is true because it says its true. "No, I might consider the possibiility that a "scriptural record" is wrong; but that would certainly be my last resort. Then I'd whack my forehead and admit that the problem must be my own." You almost admitted the possibility of an open mind but before you even finished what you were typing you closed it again. just reread what you wrote , the implication is under no circumstances will you consider the bible to be in error. I cannot think of a more perfect example of closed mind than that.

Mockingbird, did you just read the first line of my reposnse and then ignore the rest? I did not restrict my argument to just the one fact that the bible calls the moon a light. I also included the other mistakes . I will restate them in case you missed them: 1)Stars are created after the Earth, this contradicts contradicts known evidence form astronomy 2) Stars are described as being created to light the Earth , this contradicts the fact that most stars are invisible to the naked eye 3) Plants are created before the sun, impossible becuase plants need sun light for phto synthesis 4) Water exists before the sun, impossible due to rather low temperatures that would exist in such a state 5) Day and night exist before the sun, do I need to say why this is impossible? Now that should be more than adequate evidence that the bible contains errors. Now I might asks why you chose to ignroe these errors but I think you have revealed why already, you say "If I were shown evidence that contradicts the "scriptural record," I'd see if there were any way the two actually could be reconciled (this is commonly overlooked in such contradictions), and if not, I'd study the scriptural record more deeply to see if the problem had to do with a flawed interpretation. " now Ill note that you dont include even the possibility that you would consider that "scriptual record" was simply wrong. You wil consider it to be misintrepted but you wont consider it to be wrong.That perhaps gives us an insight into how closed minded religious minds are. I for example, dont have a single book that I wont change my opinion on if the evidence demands it.

The sun , the stars and the moon are described in Genesis and moreover their purpose are described: Genesis 1 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, What one should notice is that the moon is described as a light, not giving light but is a light. This is exactly the kind of mistake we would expect an ancient ignorant group of men to make. Now also notice that the stars are made after the creation of the Earth. This is another factual error,as possible as it is to make one, all astronomical observations and cosmoligical theories indicate that the stars existed before the Earth. Furthermore most stars are not visible to the naked eye and so the idea that they were made to light the Earth is also factually wrong. Again these are not just mistakes but exactly the kind of mistakes one would expect ancient ignornt men to make. Also go back in Genesis and we find that plants and herbs are are made before the sun and the moon. This is yet anothher mistake because plants cant exist without photosynthesis. Yet anothher mistake and exatly the kind of mistake we would expect ancient ignorant men to make. Now go back even further in Genesis and we find even more mistakes. Firstly water exists before any light and before the existence of the sun or other stars. This is impossible as water would freeze. Also day and night are created before the sun is created. Now Im aware some christians who are not crazy fundamentlists claim that this is a metphorical day that it refers to an epoch or something, But if that were true why does it define it this way?: "and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." Im sorry but this passage tells us the conventional 24hhr day is the apropriate definition , this indicted yet again that the bible was written by ancient ignorant men and that is factually wrong on may counts.

Science does not deal with proof, thats mathematics. I have never asked for proof, evidence yes, they are different. perhaps studying a bit more science will help clarify that. Now If i have evidence that there is no such thing as you describe as an "invariable nature of a human.", why will you not consider that evidence? All facets of human behaviour can change and are a function of at least genetics, enviroment and brain chemistry. Now if you have a better way of arriving at knowledge other than looking at the evidence I sure would like to hear it.

"My list of atheists on dropzone.com I'm willing to exchange thoughts with is diminishing. Phil is too sensitive (trekki nerd comment put his panties in a wad)," Isnt it interesting that people remember events differently to how they actaully happened? Magicians know this as people often describe effects in retrospect as being more spectacular than they were. People who believe in the supernatural may be more prone to this effect than others although we all suffer from it. For example a study carried out by pyschologist DR Richards Wiseman found that people would remember pyschics performing feets that they infact did not perform. Looking at the above passagge from Steve the implication is that he doesnt want to debate me because of my sensitivity. In fact the rationale he actaully gave at the time was very different, here is what he really said: "I love to discuss theology with those who differ from me from fellow pastors & Christians to Buddhist & atheists. However, I have grown very weary of the debate continually being tossed back to scientific reason just as I would grow weary of the KJV only people's debates. No offense to you personally, but I'm "brushing the dust off and moving on" from your replies. I wish you peace!" One should notice no mention of my sensitivty instead an inability to face the scientific evidence. In particualr at the time I was challenging Steve's concpetion of innate human nature by presenting him evidence form changes in human nature caused by changes in brain chemistry. This of course does not support the conclusion of an innate human nature that could survive death. In the face of scientific evidennce those with fixed views in contradiction to that evidence often buckle up. If Im too senstive I apologise for that but i will not apologise for using scientific evidence to make conclusion abotu the world around us, how should we come to rationale conclusion?

"My list of atheists on dropzone.com I'm willing to exchange thoughts with is diminishing. Phil is too sensitive (trekki nerd comment put his panties in a wad), Hairy is too far on the edge (denying the existence of a historical figure and all) Have a great day! " Is it possible that the problem is with you? The list of theists I refuse to correspond with is zero. I didnt think your star trek comment weas appropriate but i think your description of my reaction is something of an exageratrion and not a very polite one at that ,but I can take it.

I very much agree with Nightingale. The fact that we have uncertainty means killing innocents is inevitable. In the Uk we have had many cases of serious miscarriages of justice particulary with regard to anti terror operations. Whilst I agree some people may deserve death and possibly worse, the fact that we might get the decision wrong means we should not enter into punishments that are so irreversible. If we lock someone up we can release them and compensate them in the event of miscarriage of justice, since we cant revive the dead we should not enter into such a punishment.

So Steve are you sayig that freedom and democracy are the same thing? i agree democracy is a essential mechanism that helps safe guards freedom but democracy does not equal freedom. My study of Us histroy is not perhaps scholarly but as i recall the country was a democarcy from its inception but it had slavery for a large proportion of its existence. My own country , the UK , is a constiutional monarchy. At the time when abolition of slavery was being debated in the US the Uk had alreadsy abolished it. Now the Uk had more power to unelected officials such as the house of Lords and The queen. By your definition the Us was more free but it had a much higher proportion of its population enslaved. i think you can see that the issue is not so clear cut as you suggest. In a more general sense if 51% of the population elect to enslave 49% of the population we may agree that such a decision is consitent with democracy but not necessarily consitent withh freedom. But perhaps this is all getting a bit off topic?