How about Francis Collins who cracked the Human Genome in record time?

You're right about the time spewing....can't be reversed.

My motive is the truth. The fact of the matter is that this forum is better educated than my family and presents better arguments than my family does.

You couldn't convince me with an argument.

I'm too into comparing the bible with life and life imo bears out the truth of the bible.

I know Aaron W. wouldn't agree, but this pretty much matches perfectly with my definition of brainwashed.

I believe I'm less brainwashed than you are.

I bet you believed the FGM allegations that atheists typically make without investigating it but just blindly swallowed the horror story because you want to blame all religion.

I'm a Christian but I never bought that misattribute.

Here's the thing Splendour: Any belief I have, ANY belief I have, can be changed with sufficient logic or sufficient evidence. You, unfortunately, cannot make this claim.

....and no, I don't believe or disbelieve the FGM allegations because I haven't dedicated enough time or effort to that particular claim.

I don't think we are all that far off from the floodgates opening. A ton of religious people are only religious because its the default position. A few more decades of chipping away and atheism could hold a pretty substantial majority IMO.

I just hope religious extremists who see the writing on the wall don't decide to do anything crazy.

Your statement above is weak.

Because you don't even know what evidence I have.

I have evidence of such a quality that there isn't enough logic in the world to challenge it.

If you're interested in learning something about the Christian evidence question try reading The Apologetics of Jesus by Geisler and Zukeran.

Not that the book presents all of the evidence I've found. It doesn't.

I have more evidence than that book presents. I've been collecting it for years and it's not dismissable by arguments.

Evidence usually can't be disproved by arguments.

All arguments do is lead you down the rabbit hole of self congratulation when you didn't even do your own evidence search.

I feel like if you displayed this evidence in a thread it would be very intriguing........

From what I've seen your 'evidence' is nothing of the sort, and you always end up stomping your feet and swearing off 2+2.

I won't present the evidence again. I did for several years in the past and I usually got trolled en masse for it.

I believe a large group of atheists on here are militant/political atheists. They have atheistic political goals so they will do their best to disrupt things and they are more than willing to engage in personal attacks.

Read Geisler/Zukeran's book. It's their philosophical claim that God never expected people to believe without evidence it's just people don't understand the evidence case to present it very well and it's pretty much an accepted cliche that faith and evidence are incompatible. But they're not. People just don't think critically enough about it and/or fail to observe things so the cliche has gotten entrenched.

interesting that a person of god wouldn't want to put forth the effort to share this evidence to bring more people to the side of the righteous

I have plenty of threads for you to read.

On top of that I just gave you a book to start things off right.

I'm a very lucky person because I actually did an evidence search trying to help people.

I'd already had a historical epiphany and a family healing prior to my evidence search though.

Besides I believe some people have higher perception powers than others so they weigh the evidence and testimony better than others. So we theists have a hidden evidentiary case based on perception that people always fail to notice.

We have loads of intelligent people on here, don't you think it more likely that your evidence just wasn't compelling?

This reads very much like someone who should be wearing a tin-foil hat. You're going to have to provide evidence to support such a claim.

The second definition of faith from dictionary.com is "Belief that is not based on proof." So in a very real way, faith and evidence are mutually exclusive.

Please link me to the most relevent of your threads

God creates every person, so are you saying he chooses to give theists better powers of perception while limiting those perceptual gifts in others?

Don't you think entrenchment would extend to dictionary definitions asd?

And don't you think that most people fail to realize that the miracles of the Old and New Testament are the attendant proofs (evidence) from God? Geisler and Zukeran explain this in their book in detail.

It's an audacious thing to take upon yourself the authority to tell God he has to do another miracle when he may have decided to credential Jesus Christ specifically with them so that he can stand out clearly from every other religious leader in history.

Jesus Christ makes the most astounding claims in history and many of his claims are underscored by specific miracles. Like I said the book explains this in detail.

No, I'm saying that even if God/Jesus did the miraculous, they have both failed to meet their burden of proof with respect to future generations. And it's audacious of God to think that we should believe in supernatural claims where the only 'evidence' are witness accounts, which have been proven time and time again to be terrible indicators of reality. For a recent parallel read up on the 'miracles' of Sai Baba and his followers who believe them. Now imagine playing the telephone game with those claims for 40 years before anyone decides to write them down.

I will try to find some threads for you. You'll have to excuse the trolling.

I don't claim all theists have better natural powers but I believe some may. You can study Myers/Briggs personality profiles and psychiatrists identify some types as being more perceptive than others.

I don't know if you can blunt your perception by arguing or education but I suppose you could. People are able to talk themselves out of anything by over analyzing things and refusing to go with their gut or first impressions.

As for the limitation of perception, I don't claim God limits one group more than another. All people suffer from spiritual blindness to varying degrees even believers. In the book of Revelation it's the believer who is told to apply the eye salve.

Rev. 3:18
"I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see."

I'm sorry, but 'going by your gut' is a terrible way to understand reality. There are plenty of counter intuitive things in this universe which you must, in your words, "over analyse" in order to bear them out. Special relativity come to mind.

I'm already spiritually blind so why would God make it even harder by making scientific stipulations for me to follow?

I don't believe He would.

But you're going backwards now and applying modern day criteria to ancient times.

As for the telephone game, Middle Eastern oral tradition is nothing like the telephone game. This is where assuming then arguing hoses your argument and you want me to depend on arguments?

Here's an expert, Kenneth Bailey, on Oral Tradition explaining exactly how exacting that tradition is:

Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels by Kenneth E. Bailey

http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/ar...on_bailey.html

I'm saying that with any belief, including a belief in God, you cannot simply "go by your gut" because your 'gut' has been proven wrong time and time again.

I don't believe that's accurate either.

I used the word gut but you could use the word perception, first impression, etc.

People are reliant on their perception for almost everything they do in life. And people are reliant on their gut for safety. Oprah even had an expert on explaining one time how people get in unsafe situations when they ignore or override their gut.

So now you're telling me that my gut isn't sufficient for making a life or death decision. Because that's what an eternal life decision could be...a life or death decision.

I use my perception all the time for everything but I now have to substitute some "intellectual criteria" over my normal operating procedure.

Do you think God intends us to operate on our own system or some substitute one we may not even be proficient at?

Fine by me.

Yes, humans should be leery of unsafe situations, but this perception can, and should be overridden when more information about the situation is obtained. I'm pretty sure you consider a child's fear of a monster under the bed to be irrational, for instance. Or possibly a fear of all snakes because some can be poisonous.

Considering many people of other religions also feel it in their gut goes to show that your gut is a poor indicator of reality.

You do use intellectual criteria for your normal operating procedure, you just call it your 'gut'. For instance, pretend as a child you were told not to eat a certain wild berry because it's poisonous. Later in life you see a similar looking berry and your gut tells you not to eat it because it might be poisonous. Now, this is a good thing because it potentially saved you from eating a poisonous berry, but it's not an indicator that this new berry actually is poisonous. Given more information, you would gladly change your stance and eat said berry.

Using reason is our own system, and you'll become more proficient at it the more you reason the world around you.

Reason is not the only system.

This forum is just loaded with afficionados of it.

I once had a neurological expert on this board explain how intuition is more accurate in some people than the ability to reason.

Most people make a lot of assumptions about reason without knowing the neurology.

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Here's a copy of Aver-aging's post on the neurology several years back from a thread I did on intuition:

What you just described is modern psychology's understanding of intuition. Quickly processing subtle environmental cues is the process of intuition. I can't stress how important it is for a person to understand neo-cortical neurology to better understand any neurological phenomenon. The design of the neocortex is hierarchical in nature, and the higher the activity, the more the thought is understood by the individual (or so its thought, at least). Lower areas of the neo-cortical hierarchy are more sensitive to small changes in the environment because they are less subject to interpretation from other areas of the neo-cortex. That's precisely why logic can actually be inaccurate.

The neo-cortex is a feedback system, and the higher parts of the hierarchy are more reliant on feedback from other levels than the lower, as they receive no direct information from sensory input. The lower levels, however, receive input from both the higher levels (there is actually more connections going from the top to the bottom then there is going from the bottom to the top) and sensory organs. If you've ever watched that special on the man with 'The highest IQ in the world' that is a perfect example of how having excellent logic can be detrimental to one's ability to perceive reality accurately. My guess is that if you looked at his brain it would have a low cell count in the lower areas of the neo-cortical hierarchy.

Also, its important to mention that some people would naturally have better intuition than others. It all depends on the individuals particular neo-cortical arrangement. It's my guess that having a high amount of direct sensory to low-hierarchy connection/cell count AND having low-hierarchy to the highest levels of neo-cortical hierarchy connection count would result in individuals with phenomenal intuitive abilities.

I mean, there needs to be more research though. This whole field is very fuzzy, and very misunderstood. They need to start dissecting people's neo-cortex after they die (from causes that were not a result of brain trauma or degenerative diseases), while attaining as much personal information about these people while they are still alive and healthy.

*EDIT*

To whoever said intuition is just shoddy logic, you obviously don't know what you are talking about. Intuition is so much more than 'shoddy logic'. For some people it's more reliable than actually being logical. For others, its a lot less reliable. It really varies from individual to individual.