Christopher Hitchens Dies

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

Evidence cannot even be meaningfully discussed until epistemology is settled in the first place. Yours is that my God cannot exist.(your “objective” analysis is already a denial). Mine is that He alone is existence itself. We’ll get nowhere. I am also not restarting that discussion, which is all over these forums, here. I’ll point you to one where you can read for an hour and get caught up if you care, but you don’t which is fine.

[/quote]

This is completely false, and a cop out. God alone is existence itself, no problem. Agreed agreed and agreed. We’re all just individual waves in the ocean that is God and I am nothing without him. No problemo.

Now present compelling evidence that the God of Abraham as presented in the Bible is in fact God. You can’t, no one can. This is where you cop out and say that you have to accept the Bible as the word of God on faith alone, and after that all will make sense.

I do try to not respond to your post as I promised Greg, but as you already pointed out, I am somewhat undisciplined and unfocused.

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I’m happy to talk to you Ben and in case you haven’t noticed, I will never throw that in your face. My goal is not to prove I’m smarter or better than you are. I just want to be faithful to Him. Please refer to one of the dozen threads where this has been discussed EXTENSIVELY.

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There is mention of many animals in the bible though, and it seems a bit weird to leave out the time Abel had to haul ass to save his sheep from a Velociraptor. But ok, they died in the flood then.

How do you deal with Radiocarbon dating?

Take your time man, no rush.

204

Fucking with Mormons is funnier than fucking with Christians.

205

Dude don’t leave me hanging. Links please, I’m new here. haha

So far, you seem to be confirming everything I wrote in the OP of that other thread. You say “created to display His Glory before an intelligent audience”, I say “created by a bored God to worship Him.” Amounts to the same thing if God already knows how everything will go down. HE orchestrated the fall of Man after all, all according to his will and pleasure.

See, all you have to do is convince me that the bible is the actual word of God, and I’ll be a calvinist too. There is no arguing with your bible interpretation.

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[quote]niksamaras wrote:
Fucking with Mormons is funnier than fucking with Christians.[/quote]

Yeah but too easy. Even MORMONS know Mormonism is bullshit. lol

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[quote]Quick Ben wrote:

[quote]niksamaras wrote:
Fucking with Mormons is funnier than fucking with Christians.[/quote]

Yeah but too easy. Even MORMONS know Mormonism is bullshit. lol[/quote]

True, with mormons you can just say the word magnet and the story is over. LOL

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[quote]Quick Ben wrote:<<< See, all you have to do is convince me that the bible is the actual word of God, and I’ll be a calvinist too. >>>[/quote]No you wouldn’t. You already know. Romans 1 says so. I have to take some computers back and will be gone for several hours at least. Tell me Ben. What would constitute “proof” to you?

[quote]Quick Ben wrote:<<< There is no arguing with your bible interpretation.[/quote]I’m not sure what to make of this.

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It’s a compliment on your grasp of scripture. However understanding scripture has little meaning if the scripture is false.

Proof for me… hmm how about you get two of your brothers together and pray that I be saved? It’s supposed to be answered if you are of sufficient faith, right?

You honestly believe there is any vice I’m so addicted to that I would say no thanks to eternal salvation just to have a few more years of wallowing in filth? You think I hate God and glorify evil? You have quite an imagination on you.

210

This is a great post Ben. (is that your real name BTW? ) Not because you gave me a compliment. But because it is brimming with meaty opportunities. Opportunities that will have to wait because I have to run the big screen at my church tonight for the watchnight service and I have to get ready.

To be clear. I do not mean opportunities to beat you up or put you down at all. I knew you had to be better than what you were givin me. I may have a little time, but Squatting Bear has dibs on that if needed. You’ll get answers to this one though.

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[quote]Quick Ben wrote:<<< How do you deal with Radiocarbon dating? >>>[/quote]More Cracks in Evolution: Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth | SermonAudio need sleep

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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
This is a great post Ben. (is that your real name BTW? ) Not because you gave me a compliment. But because it is brimming with meaty opportunities. Opportunities that will have to wait because I have to run the big screen at my church tonight for the watchnight service and I have to get ready.

To be clear. I do not mean opportunities to beat you up or put you down at all. I knew you had to be better than what you were givin me. I may have a little time, but Squatting Bear has dibs on that if needed. You’ll get answers to this one though. [/quote]

Alright, shit. Let me strap in. lol

Nah, Quick Ben is just a character from a book. Much like (sorry can’t resist) Noah, Moses, and Adam.

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I go and live my offline life for a few hours, come back, and see 2 more pages added to this thread.

Heaven and Hell are big topics these days, huh boys?

And it’s 2012, will the end of the world come this year?

All being hotly debated on a tribute thread to a a dead atheist.

[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
you crawled on top of the wifey and rolled the dice like everyone else.

his disciples and church have fucked it all up.

[/quote]
I’ll start with you Ben.

You mentioned your parents don’t want to talk to you about this stuff. Maybe it’s because you’re such a smart kid, and they don’t have the answers. Of course that doesn’t mean they’re aren’t any. We here can get you some answers. However, read the bible from cover to cover once would be a good start. If you want to consider yourself educated that is. You say you want proof the bible is God’s word. Maybe He’d show you something if you read it?

Or, maybe it’s cause your a smart ass. Do you talk disrespectfully to your parents? Something for you to think about.

You can’t hurt my feelings Ben. But my opinion of you will drop a bit. A good rule of thumb is- if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, you shouldn’t type it.

[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
And you Chen, a catholic? You have to do a little better than “I don’t know anyone who raised their kids in what I consider to be a perfect way and then have it turn out bad.” Do you know believers who have non-believing kids or no? Surely Jesus himself said that the last will be first, and the first will be last. Getting it right from birth is not a requirement, or a guarantee that a person will stay the course. [/quote]
I’m an independent baptist. I’m a bible-believer. I do know Christians families that didn’t start out right and their kids aren’t Christians. Starting out right gives a good enough guarantee. It’s as good or BETTER than any other guarantees in life. See Proverbs 22:6. You should understand that not all Christians are in such a miserable and weak condition as you may have observed say in your parents circle. Does that mean Jesus and His disciples messed up? Well, His disciples surely have, but Jesus never has.

“The last will be first, and the first will be last.” Sorry, I don’t see that this statement by Jesus has anything to do with the above.

[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
DINOSAURS[/quote]
Not everything that exists on this earth is mentioned in the bible. How come they weren’t in the ark? Maybe Noah disobeyed. I can only speculate. Maybe he thought they would cause to much trouble. Maybe God gave Noah specific instructions not to that aren’t recorded in scripture. Such a question as this certainly isn’t going to cause me to think the bible isn’t God’s word. My point is it’s a minor issue. Dwelling on it, and others like it, is often used by people as an excuse to reject the whole bible. When you stand before your Creator, He will not accept the unanswered dinosaur issue (or such like it) as a reason for rejecting His Son. Now I don’t mind anyone spending time examining the evolution/creation conflict. I’m sure God is willing for you to do so. I think you should, as I did. There is lot’s of material on it. If you want some recommendations I could look up a few for you. It’s an interesting topic. My opinion is evolution is a ludicrous theory, that DOES NOT explain the facts. It’s held to so staunchly by so many, because to dump it would leave nothing in it’s place, except God of course, and most rejected Him before they started on their way to evolution fantasyland:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
(Rom 1:21-22)

[quote]Quick Ben wrote:

[quote]Mr. Chen wrote:
Believe-Repent-Recieve. If you reject it, I’d say you’re the one that’s messed up.
[/quote]
This is just mind boggling. I cannot force myself to believe that Jesus was a God any more than you can force yourself to believe that he was not. What is so hard to understand about that?[/quote]
Ok, and this one. Aragorn has addressed this some. Take the time, and make examination of your life, and the world around you. Is the bible God’s word? Here’s a page with an apologetic article: Is the Bible True? - Come Reason Ministries. Don’t forget though, you are responsible to your Creator to respond. You don’t get to go your whole life and then say you didn’t have time to figure it out. You have had His light shining in your conscience since day one. (John 1:9)

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Quick Ben!!???

Is that really you in the avatar now? Your hairline is beginning to recede. I would’ve NEVER guessed. I see also you’re standing in front of the magazine rack at the library, where you SHOULD NOT be smoking.

And my offline life calls. May not be back for a few days.

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My parents are dying to talk to me about this “stuff”, as you put it. I avoid it because I have no desire to challenge their faith, or to drive any further wedges between us. Also I don’t know if you’ve clicked my profile, but I’m a grown man, 29 as it were.

If you don’t see the relevance of “the first will be last…” in relation to living your whole life “saved”, or being saved by coming to Christ late in life, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re the one arguing that parents who came to their faith late in life are more likely to have their children “fall.” Of course I would have to agree that the earlier you start ANY indoctrination, the better the chances of making it stick. Noah disobeyed? The only righteous man on the planet suddenly decides “I’m not hauling that Apatosaurus in there, that’s ridiculous.” Get real, if the world is 6000 years old and the dinosaurs walked the earth with man, then them not being mentioned in the bible is a huge fucking plot hole. A minor issue he says. LOL

Your link doesn’t work.

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[quote]Mr. Chen wrote:
I go and live my offline life for a few hours, come back, and see 2 more pages added to this thread.

Heaven and Hell are big topics these days, huh boys?

And it’s 2012, will the end of the world come this year?

All being hotly debated on a tribute thread to a a dead atheist.

[/quote]

Aaah there it is. The smug little smirk of the believer who has it all figured out :slight_smile:

You may want to pause for a minute and recognize that the same confident smirk is on the faces of:

Catholics
Jehovas Witnesses
Calvinists
Protestants
Mormons
Scientologists (lol)
Jews
Muslims
Atheists
Trekkies

… and just about everyone else except the one group I might associate with, the Hindus.

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Another one for you guys; Jesus told some dude in Matthew something or other that all he had to do to enter life was to keep to the commandments. Then to abandon all his riches and follow Jesus.

So why all the heated arguments about theology on here, even going so far as to condemn fellow believers for idol worship?

EDIT: Nice, I made my 666th post and it’s about theism. lol

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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:<<< So you are saying that Ph.D’s can’t also be wise born again christians? >>>[/quote]Noooo man I am not saying that. One of my all time heroes of the faith is DR Cornelius Van til. (try this: A Defense of Reformed (biblical) Presuppositional Apologetics by Cornelius VanTil ) The Dutchman who codified the modern school of trinitarian theistic presuppositional epistomology and apologetics out of which emerged what has become known as the transcendental argument for the existence of God. The very one I am incessantly declaring here. One of my absolute favorite living preachers is DR Voddie Bauchum ( What Is The Gospel? | SermonAudio ) A black man (who I’ve met) who walks this earth covered in the full armor of God, a mighty faithful WARRIOR for Jesus and true scholar of the holy scriptures. Not surprisingly he believes just about everything I do. He would probably think me being a bit lenient on “pastor” Blue.

BTW, sermonaudio.com has hundreds of thousands of actual sermons by thousands of preachers from all sorts of orthodox theological backgrounds. I know the criterion they use for allowing somebody’s work to be published there. They’re ALL more or less good. See there. You don’t have to agree with me on everything to be a Christian. It’s not about agreeing with ME at all. There is however a gospel core without which one displays their non Christian status.

There is also a moral core which if one is not seeking God to live by, it is evidence that have not been born again. The first epistle of John is all about this. He says there are children of God and children of the devil and which are which is obvious. No righteousness? No Jesus. (1 John 3:10) This whole I’m ok you’re ok “don’t judge” thing is a modern perversion. We are commanded TO judge those inside the church claiming to be Christ’s (1st Corinthians 5).

I don’t know who the elect are and I certainly cannot pass judgement on somebody’s final destiny. I can see fruit though and easily determine the credibility of somebody’s present testimony. I see it all the time here. Even very recently. Somebody posts behind me their approval of some long post of mine on Jesus, the gospel and or morality. I dip into their posting history and there they are with the filthy language trading porn sites. With another guy who was amenning my militant gospel posts last year. [quote]Aragorn wrote:<<< How do you even know if they came from one of those conservative good Christian schools or a liberal and terrible one? >>>[/quote]Who cares. That’s not the point. The point is what they SAY. Jesus said that “by their fruit you shall know them for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth SPEAKS”. You came at me with some guys with letters after their name who disagree with me as if that somehow qualified them as reliable sources of biblical truth. In the vast majority of cases today it’s just the opposite. What you see me declaring here has been believed by the church universal since ancient times. If they disagree with that they are heretics with no testimony.[/quote]

I didn’t “come at you” with anything. What I said was that there are very educated and very faithful people who have spent a lifetime studying the Bible who would disagree with you. Analogously–call me crazy, but If I am talking with you and Louie Simmons about squatting advice, I’m going to consider carefully weighing Louie Simmons’ advice if he disagrees with what you say about squatting. I might not end up agreeing with him OR you, but I’ll damn sure think about what he said because he’s spend HIS LIFE studying and living it. You on the other hand refuse to acknowledge that somebody who is both Christian faith based and educated could disagree with you about some things.

IN FACT, you didn’t even bother to read what I was talking about in terms of disagreement, but instead pushed your own assumptions on what I was talking about into the conversation without even stopping to see if maybe, MAYBE, you were talking about something different than I was.

Further, you very clearly implied that “liberal and demonic” schools that pretend to be “Christian” are where “the majority” of these people come from. That very clearly implies a blanket dismissal of everybody based on where they went to school, which incidentally you just denied doing above with “Who cares. That’s not the point. The point is what they SAY”. You can’t have it both ways.

[quote]See Paul told the church at Corinth that he feared that lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunnning that their minds would be led astray from the SIMPLICITY AND PURITY of devotion to Christ. (2nd Corinthians 2:13). I’ll bet a million that Debbie Blue and this other guy, if cornered, believe in neither the serpent nor Eve. The serpent wins and here you are acting as if these are the insightful people who should explain the “psychology” of that very “simplicity and purity” as declared by Mr. Chen and myself. Go ahead. That’s your right, but you do not get it at all.

The life and death gospel IS simple and pure. Everybody’s born dead and lost. Everybody. God born man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth has provided THE one and only solution that there will EVER EVER be. Those who entrust their lives to Him will live forever in the family of God Himself. Those who do not, whether they be in the choir at my church or the bush of sub Saharan Africa, will remain in their state of perdition for all eternity. None of this is intelligible without a literal first man who plunged us into sin and death. Jesus Himself said God created them male and female “IN THE BEGINNING”. Not after zillions of years of evolution. Either He’s lyin or those who deny that are. [quote]Aragorn wrote:<<< Experience and study deserve consideration even if it’s only to determine that you think its bollocks, if only to shore up your current position with better defense. >>>[/quote] Did you not see that I said I have read more abominable heresy than everybody else here combined. It’s on this page. [quote]Aragorn wrote:<<< And it’s the height of arrogance to dismiss everybody in a given field because some of them say things you firmly believe are false or even evil. >>>[/quote]I did not say “field”. I said denomination. And yes I can. When a given organization is all about destroying the authority of the Word of God and the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I declare anybody who voluntarily associates themselves with it to be destroyers of the authority of the Word of God and the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

No, you don’t. I didn’t tell you their names, and they are not named Debbie Blue. I was talking about other people. And without even seeing who I was talking about you can’t possibly know whether or not they’re acceptably Biblical in teaching now can you? Secondly, I was not talking about any single denomination, so you can’t possibly throw that card at me. Incidentally the people I was talking about are not United Methodists. Sorry.

The only way to be infallible on a subject–ANY SUBJECT–would be if you yourself were God. Therefore, you cannot be 100% certain of everything you say all the time unless you are equating yourself with God. Which you don’t. So pick one please.

Secondly I never mentioned anything about “I’m ok you’re ok let’s not judge everybody’s ok tolerance” in the first place. I don’t know where you got that so please drop it because I wasn’t talking about it.

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[quote]storey420 wrote:
“The only thing that matters to God or Satan is whether someone is born again.” check

The only thing that matters to Tiribulus is whether someone ascribes to his exact brand of Christianity in order to get it “right”
[/quote]

Thank you for putting this much more succinctly than I could have. I am too wordy. And in the next place it’s not about getting it all “right” in the first place. It’s about trying to become more like Jesus ie: “following him” (obligatory caveat for Tirib–as well as accepting Jesus as your savior and forgiveness of sins, etc. etc. etc.). To my understanding, if you’re not perfect you don’t measure up. And nobody’s perfect. Therefore nobody measures up. So pretending you are 100% certain about everything you say all the time is both pointless and a lie. Maybe to yourself, maybe to others, but a lie nonetheless.

I don’t know any Christian who’s certain about everything in their life, and specifically has no confusion in their faith life. Tirib is the first I am aware of.

I’d pull a quote for Tirib but I am certain (hah!) he would immediately discount it as wrong because he is so certain about everything. Or he’d try to rationalize it.

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Tirib–

Look, I don’t want to argue with you. I said that before. I just dropped a line to some books I thought might be useful for understanding the concept of being able to “love God” as you have repeatedly claimed to do vs. “slavishly obeying a bossman God”, which I think most atheists already understand. These are very different questions. Atheists already understand the concept that if a person believes God exists that they would be compelled to obey him. In fact that’s been made abundantly clear in this thread.

And, incidentally, the question of how someone could possibly “love God” is not a question of specific interpretational theology or epistemology in Christianity. Or of denomination or creation/evolution or conservative or liberal or United Methodist or Presbyterian or Anglican or Catholic. It’s a question that states very simply “how could you possibly LOVE God when he owns utter power over you and apparently doesn’t care or give a rats ass about suffering?” Which, if it needed saying, is a question from an atheist, from an atheist’s perspective on things.

Ok, what bothers me most is that you had the opportunity to simply say “I disagree with Debbie Blue’s theology” or something similarly civil and succinct, while letting everyone know where you stand and opening a door for dialogue. Which wasn’t the point in the first place because I was talking about an emotional reality, for lack of an infinitely better phrase at the moment. Or you could have said “I haven’t read anything of hers” Or even ignore it altogether because the post wasn’t aimed at you.

And you could have addressed this privately via PM to me.

Instead you took the opportunity to immediately start shouting at the top of your lungs about how everything in the world is wrong. And how I “disappointed you grievously–I know you don’t care”. That is both a childishly passive aggressive statement and and a terrible attempt at a guilt trip. And it is enormously selfish to think that I should prioritize not disappointing you in the first place.

I don’t like or appreciate that, especially when you–the person shouting at the top of their lungs–has never read the books in question, doesn’t know what the books are actually about, and proceeds to tell me, who has read them both, specifically what they are about, on top of telling me that they are 100% certain about everything all the time and the people that I know that are both Christians and highly educated in the areas you claim to know would very possibly disagree with you. Of course, you didn’t even ask me who they were or what they said, or what denomination they were–you simply told me that they were wrong, I was wrong, and proceeded to tell me what I was talking about myself by putting words in my mouth and assuming things outright when you neither asked for clarification nor understood what I was saying in the first place.

I don’t appreciate that. That’s both insulting and bad argumentation to boot. Kindly refrain from doing any of that in the future with me.