How Much Do You Know About Christianity?

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Funny how those who supposedly value rational debate and intellectual honesty and tolerance for different groups always fall back to mockery of Christian faith in the end - but they CHOSE to do so because they have FAITH that it somehow makes them appear more intellectual - little realizing that all they manage to do is paint themselves with bigotry and hatred for people who hold different beliefs than they do.[/quote]

The problem is that you see your beliefs as being rational and intellectual when they are nothing of the sort. How much respect and seriousness do you grant to someone who claims the Earth is flat? If you went to a doctor and he talked to you about the miasma theory of disease, would you engage him in honest debate? You cannot have a rational discussion with loons who have fixed their minds forever on a set on beliefs they were indoctrinated in at an early age.

The fact that their beliefs might not be true is not even a remote possibility, so where’s the honesty?

That’s a giant pile of steaming bullshit. It’s also what pisses me off most about Christian: Their blind hypocrisy. Every day, in the news, you can find another account of Christians trying to get their failth taught in schools; they want their “commandments” displayed; prayers to open various public forums, etc. They vote and try to get like-minded simpletons in positions where they can affect the schools curriculum, etc.

All that crap has a direct impact on the lives of everyone else, whether or not they share the failth.

I’ve never been in a debate thread with Buddhists, because I’ve never in my life heard about a group of Buddhists who were trying to force their beliefs on society. You want to live in a fantasy La-La land in your home and tell your children that snakes can talk and that the Invisible Sky Fairy made them from dirt? No problem. I’m sad for the kids who’ll have to try to reconcile that crap with reality later on, but you do what you want in your house.

If you try to get that same shit in schools, or in any other public forums where I’m exposed to it, I’ll resist it, and call the ridiculous crap for what it is: Ridiculous.

Ha! Good one. Guess all those missionaries in Africa are just misguided; as are those loons preaching on street corners, or those fucking annoying idiots Mormon ringing my doorbell twice a month.

Yup, your bunch sure is big on letting people to their own beliefs.

We don’t have to misrepresent anything. The Bible is so full of ungodly crap, we just have to point it out. Of course, you have reams of spin to explain away anything, but when a few lines required a 10 pages dissertation to make sense, I think most people can tell who trying to misrepresent the facts.

Yeah, kinda hard to attack reality, ain’t it?

My bullshit detector is in peak condition. Yours seems to have been replaced with a bullshit collector and redistributor. You might want to get that checked out.

But there is no honest discussion to be had. Your conclusion is already accepted for life and set in stone. You’ll deny reality if required, just so your failth remains true. Anything that contradicts your beliefs, no matter how rock-solidly backed with evidence (ie, Evolution) will be dismissed as wrong from the get go.

Worse, you won’t even take time to learn the actual theory, you’ll go with the false and made-up one that gets disseminated by various religious groups and pretend that it’s the actual one we’re talking about. I agree that YOUR theory of Evolution is ridiculous and would only be acceptable to someone of failth; that’s why I accept the real scientific one instead. It makes sense and is back by solid evidence. But hey, you can’t have too many straw men lying around, can you?

You missed the point as usual. I was ridiculing the fact that the failthful will conflate all the meanings of the word and point out examples of “faith” (as in trust, not belief) in their opponents as proof that they also have failth (the dumb kind).

If you don’t find such a pathetic ploy amusing… well, what can I say.

[quote]Funny how you immediately:

  1. characterized all religious faith as being based on what someone else said (another ridiculous misrepresentation) - when I have used reason and rational thought to explain how I came to my world-view starting from science.[/quote]

What was that you were saying about rudimentary understanding before? Your “science” understanding is so dismal as to be a joke. You have the science background of a 4 year old. That’s why your beliefs can stand on it. If you actually were interested in real science, and got it from scientific books, instead of theologians and apologetics, you might be able to make a convincing argument.

Of course, you’d get to a point where you’d have to amend many of your beliefs, so we both know that’s never going to happen. “Fuck you reality - I deny you in the name of Jesus!”

You’re not the only credophile commenting on this thread.

Existence of the universe is proof of the existence of the universe. It does not imply anything else. That science has no definitive answer as to how the universe came to be does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that your made-up fantasy explanation is correct. It’s not a binary proposition, and you don’t get to be right by default. In that case, admitting that we don’t know is both correct and more honest than believing in an invented answer.

Whether you like it or not, and even if you refuse to admit it, your beliefs come from a long generational tradition of hearsay. There is no concrete proof of any kind, not a single shred of evidence, zero supported testimony of anything supernatural having ever occurred. There are a lot of self-deluded people going around claiming personal experiences, but that cannot be shared and is worthless as proof of anything.

Why do you think everything’s about you? I wasn’t replying to you; I didn’t mention you by name. There a bunch of you on this thread and you can find multiple examples of everything I said - and more - on any random page you click.

See what I mean about your deficient science? Science has no definitive answers about the origin of the universe. It also has no definitive answers about abiogenesis (life from non-life, although interesting developments have occurred this year). Evolution is about changes in life once life is present. Evolution is not about cosmology, nor abiogenesis. Credophiles always conflate all three because their beloved Genesis fable does the same.

And that 2nd Law of Thermodynamic you just demonstrated having no understanding of? It applies to closed systems. The Earth is not a closed system, the Sun (a big ball of energy in the sky - maybe you’ve heard of it) bombards the Earth with about 4x10^21 BTUs per year. So you can have increasing complexity without violating any laws; since the added complexity has produced more entropy than the newly arranged information produced order.

But hey, don’t let that stop you from repeating the same wrong stuff next week, next month and for the rest of your life. No sir, no logical fallacies for you. No misunderstanding or misrepresentation of science. MIT should give you an honorary degree or something.

You’re just angry that I’m trying to take a tool from your toolbox of dishonesty away. If my suggestion takes and that everyone distinguishes faith (trust, testable and verifiable) from failth (blind belief in hearsay), then you’ll have to stop claiming that everyone has failth when in reality, everyone has faith in the “trust” sense.

Vocabulary is a bit like science for you guys, ain’t it? Another thing to be conveniently twisted to suit whatever purpose you need it to? Here’s an example of the type of argument a credophile might make if he was arguing for the other side: “Hey man, ever noticed that there’s a big “LIE” in the middle of “beLIEve”, gnuck-gnuck?” (Drooling omitted).

[quote]Chushin wrote:
pookie wrote:

I’ve never been in a debate thread with Buddhists, because I’ve never in my life heard about a group of Buddhists who were trying to force their beliefs on society.

Buddhist exremists - Google 検索 [/quote]

I was thinking of the same thing…

jpb

Typical credophile tactic: Concentrate on some trivial detail and ignore all the rest of the argument. So predictable. Who was it who said he couldn’t see it when I said credophiles tried to divert the discussion away from their ridiculous beliefs? IrishSteel?

You wanted me to point out those tactics to you: There you go. Didn’t take long, did it?

Even little pushyhardly, who had initially nothing but another lame joke - just another failed attempt to find examples of their credulistic activities in others, really - readily jumps on the bandwagon once he’s shown the way. Sheeps will be sheeps; what can we do. Why don’t you shave your palms and knit us a nice sweater? Show the herd something you’re good for.

As for those buddhists: Yes, Sri Lankan events have an enormous impact on our lives here in North America. Good find guys. Nice to see you’re all able to use Google (not to mention follow the lead of the head sheep). Congratulations. I feel all refuted. Next time I see a buddhist, I’ll make sure to swat him with a rolled up Scientific American magazine, yessirree sir!

Animals can tell right from wrong:

Apparently, most mammals have a built-in moral sense. Some even show empathy and understand reciprocity.

We have a problem. Credophiles claim that it is impossible to have morals without an invisible Sky Fairy to mete out eternal damnation. By their own admissions, without that Cosmic Carrot and Stick (Heaven/Hell), they would rampage like so many sociopaths. They also need short lists of easily remembered commandments and to be repeatedly told what to do (generally, each Sunday), less they forget. For them, “don’t kill,” “don’t steal” and “don’t rape” cannot make sense on their own; they abide by them because of fear.

How can they be unable to articulate any morals by themselves if even so-called “lower” mammals can? The only answer seems to be that their cognitive abilities are heavily impaired, if not entirely absent. If we were to order living beings by mental awareness, we’d get:

  • Enlightened humans (who understand ethics and morals by reason alone).
  • Other mammals (Elephants, dolphins, primates, rodents, etc.)
  • Credophiles (amoral humans who must be tightly “ruled” into social behavior, less they run amok.)
  • Reptiles/Birds
  • Insects
  • etc.

Maybe I’m being unfair to reptiles/birds. Feel free to list them higher if you prefer. Putting them next to insects might also go some ways toward explaining their affinity for clumping in groups of like-thinkers. Large congregations where like-mindedness is worshipped and free, independent thought is frowned upon as heresy. The herd really wants to be a hive.

Pushy has, as usual, no arguments to present. Are we ever surprised.

Don’t give up pushy, you’re bound to manage something mildly amusing eventually…

Ah, pushy, too bad you can’t trade endurance for intellect. The rope is yours. I’ll address an actual argument instead:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
5. You claim science is not on our side - and we say the same about you (see creation versus evolution thread)[/quote]

There is no scientific debate about evolution. None. Nada. There exists zero other supported theory who explains the living world we see around us.

Creationism is just saying “God did it.” It explains nothing.

I have yet to see a scientific paper where the universe is described as being self-aware. There are way too many questions left to answer to give any definitive description of the universe. We don’t know if it’s the only one or one of a multitude; we don’t know if it could be different, or if any universe has to be like this one, etc. Again, you’re straw-manning science and arguing against something completely different.

Natural selection’s only criteria is whether an organism can reproduce or not. Reproduce more than your competition and you “win”, don’t and you go extinct. There is no goal, no end design to be attained and more complex forms only persist if they outcompete the simpler ones. You understand nothing of the theory you reject. Your “decline, decay and devolution” has already been addressed, but here to, you’re simply way off base on the science involved. You can get more complex forms from simpler ones and order from chaos without needing a supernatural agent and without violating any physical laws.

It appears to be you who assigns attributes to the universe. Point me to a scientific article (say, something published in Scientific American, so we don’t get a “scientific” URL from answersingenesis.org) who posits ANY of the attributes you claim for the universe.

You’re making up a position nobody holds and saying yours is no more ridiculous. Well yes, but no one holds that position.

So your actual made-up beliefs are way better than the beliefs you make up and ascbribe to non-believers? If that works for you as an intellectual argument, well I don’t know what to say. Pray for guidance or something… Read science books not written by theologians or apologists.

where is this scientific debate?

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Buddha, I quit reading your post after, “There is no scientific debate about evolution.” You are an atheistic imbecile whose faith in the secular is ironclad and unquestionable. The caricature of the fire-breathing preacher I posted above befits you well. Professing yourself to be wise you have indeed become a fool.[/quote]

Still no argument. No point. Not even a silly opinion. Sad really. Poor pushy isn’t even trying for the jokes now, he’s skipping directly to the name calling. I guess his Google search for “scientific debate about evolution” came up empty, and he’s just madly flailing around. Even forgot to paste an image to try and illustrate what he can’t articulate.

Don’t worry, pushy ol’chap, a someone should be around soon and give you a lead you can follow.

[quote] wrote:

where is this scientific debate?
[/quote]

In ze Mind of ze Pushharder.

But he refuses to give us details.

Or definitions.

Or anything really.

But he calls us zealots.

We be confused and not enlightened by his posts.

Well Pookie - thanks for sharing all of your wonderful opinions with me . . . it was so refreshing to hear a new perspective from someone who does not believe in Christianity . . .oh, wait- you just regurgiated all the same crap we hear all the time in threads like this from people well indoctrinated with the theory of the day - tons and tons of derogatory BS mixed in with piles of steaming opinions worth about as much as the time it took for you to barf them up . . . Glad you have your dogma so well memorized that real discussion are pointless - you are a true believer in your doctrines and extreme fundamentalist agnostic . . . Have fun with that . . . when you really want to discuss some issues feel free to let me know . . .

What’s a bible?