People are born in this world all the time without two people having sex to concieve them.

Sigh. The egg is still fertilized with a sperm cell that came from a man. It doesn't change the point -- belief in the virgin birth is not a logical position.

If doctors can implant an embryo into the uterus of a virgin with the expectation that said virgin will deliver a child than presumably so can God.

It is your logic that fails.

Not if he and his sperm are immaterial.

Are you seriously trying to use the fact that modern science can fertilize an egg outside of a sexual act as evidence for the immaculate conception?

DID YOU FORGET GOD IS OMNISCIENT? ARE YOU SERIOUSLY SAYING HE IS NOT SMARTER THAN SOME DOCTOR? HA HA YOU ARE REALLY AN IDIOT.

It is not evidence of immaculate conception. It is evidence your thinking is flawed. There is nothing inherently illogical about a virgin giving birth.

That's true, if you understand that the baby inside of her was created by the combining of a male sperm and a female egg and by no other method.

But that is not what the Bible says about Mary and Jesus. Just because something makes sense to you or you believe it is possible does not make it logical. The immaculate conception cannot be supported with logical arguments. Enter faith -- either you believe it or you don't. But it ain't logical either way.

I don't think you understand what logic means. In your mind if something is far-fetched it is then illogical. That simply isn't true.

Also the immaculate conception refers to the conception Mary(being concieved free of orginal sin). It has nothing to do with the virgin conception of Jesus.

I took several logic courses in college, I remember what the word means. I never said that if something is far-fetched then it is illogical, nor would I agree with that statement. I did say that just because something makes sense to you does not make it logical.

The birth of a human baby without a male sperm and a female egg being joined together cannot be supported by logical argument. Neither can Jesus's alleged miracles and resurrection. This is not even debatable, and frankly I'm not even sure why you're trying. Isn't faith in the miraculous the whole point for you?

All I did in my first post on this thread was to argue against the statement "religion doesn't ask us to disregard logic".

That is precisely what religion does when it asks you to put your faith in things that are impossible by all known standards.

Sure it can. Try this argument for example:


A "seed" is necessary for a human female to concieve.
Only human males or the Holy Spirit can provide that "seed".
Mary concieved a child without recieving the "seed" from a human male.
Therefore Mary's child was concieved with the "seed" was provided by the Holy Spirit.

Now you may not like some of the premises of that argument but nevertheless it is a logical argument.

Sure, that is a logical argument, but it is a faulty one and I trust it is obvious why.

Even allowing the (ludicrous imo) possibility of a self-adapting environment "evolving" to produce intelligence life, citing one example of it is not showing your work as to its likelihood.

The claim was that alien abductions are "infinitely" more probable.

We don't know aliens are a possibility. Seeing them in movies and speculating about how they might have arisen the same way we speculate we might have arisen is not a calculation of probability, much less a demonstration of the "infinitely" greater likelihood of that happening versus something else we don't know how to calculate the likelihood of.

Let's see.... Nope, no actual content there to respond to. (Where's the beef?) Come back when you have something of substance to contribute rather than diluting the forum even further with yet another "you're a tard" or similar inanity.

Its not obvious nor is it faulty. To show its faulty you must show that one of the premises is wrong.

Lets see you show that the Holy Ghost does not exist or even if he does exist he is incapable of providing the seed necessary for a human female to concieve.

At best all you can say is that some of the premises are far-fetched and therefore the argument fails to convince you.

You may think the mechanism that has produced intelligent life on earth is ludicrous, but it is also the reality we can observe and measure.
The existence of life on earth, while presently the only observable case of life in this universe, does tell us something important; it tells us that life CAN arise. You are right that we don’t know the probability of it happening, but we do know it is greater than zero.
We do not similarly know that the existence of a god is a meaningful possibility.
That is the whole point.



I responded to the meat of the claim, that they are more probable. It is not clear what it would mean for something to be "infinitely" more probable, so we have to strike the hyperbole to have something useful to discuss.



What makes the aliens aliens to us, if they do exist, is that they live in a place we don’t. We would be aliens to the aliens.
You are simply mistaken when you claim we don’t know that aliens are a possibility, we are definitive evidence that they are.
There would be nothing extraordinary about “aliens” existence somewhere else in the universe, it would be fully explainable by what we already know about the universe.
The existence of a god on the other hand, requires the adding of a supernatural dimension, that we have not been able to find one whiff of evidence for in all of human history.
Clearly the existence of the phenomena compatible with reality as we know it is more likely.
You are focused on calculating the probability of life arising, but the only thing we need to know is that it is greater than zero. We do know that.
Adding "infinitely" is again just an appeal to hyperbole, and does not really add anything.

You are correct that I do not believe there is evidence to support either alien abductions or the Immaculate Conception. I do believe there is ample evidence that your desk and my desk are mostly empty space.

Do you see the difference in my wording? It's evidence.

The physics of atomic structure is something that can be tested. It can be researched. It can be refined as our understanding grows.

Belief in a scientific theory is nothing like belief in religious rhetoric or pseudo-scientific woo. Science relies on logic, evidence, and meticulous testing. Religion rejects all of this. Pseudo-science pretends at it.

Well now you spoiled the fun of the game.

I love atheist who believe in aliens though. Bigfoot believers too.

There is if that event is reported to have occurred 2000 years ago, prior to even a mediocre understanding of the existence of cells or an inkling of modern biology.

Your responses demonstrate a willful disregard of an obvious truth. If you want to fall back on the "well God can do anything" argument, you don't need to justify it with modern fertility science.

If you don't have anything intelligent to contribute, please don't post.

My post was not to indicate "you're a tard" My post was to point out that the idea of belief trumping logic and reason is in and of itself flawed logic. For people that post in a poker forum, a game based largely on logic, the skirting around of how illogical a statement and how illogical the circular theory is baffles me. We can agree to agree, we can agree to disagree, or you can tell me my logic is way off base while supporting a "logical" conclusion that the holy ghost suddenly has the ability to produce male human sperm and ejaculate it into a female without breaking her hymen. One of those options is not a correct way to structure an argument.

No.

If you cannot support the premises in your "logic" then they are worthless premises. It is not up to others to disprove your baseless claims -- it is up to you to make your claims something more than baseless.

Let's see you show that purple unicorns do not exist. And if you can't, then surely there must be such a thing as purple unicorns.

Please be a troll.

Stephanie, I like you better when you're trying to be funny or an alter ego. Otherwise you just remind me way too much of someone....

Hi Stu

Orly? Macro-evolution, of course. Where has any such mechanism been observed or measured to the barest minimum extent of connecting reproductively incompatible populations by lineal descent? Note this involves a twofold criterion: 1) observation of a mechanism connecting reproductively incompatible populations by lineal descent and 2) demonstration that the mechanism observed is indeed capable of being extended to produce effects comparable to those claimed for "evolution".

It does not tell "us" anything of the sort. It may tell some people that, but for it to tell science the same thing requires observations and measurements of a demonstrably sufficient set of causes to make the claimed process happen. Such does not exist. Macro-evolution is long on handwavy claims and extremely short on actual science. What it does legitimately have observations and evidence for is micro-evolution, which the evolutionary illusionists try to pass off as extrapolatable to macro-evolution, again with negligible basis in observation and measurement.

Some people have that faith. Others notice the lack of observation and measurement backing it up. Macro-evolution is one of the predominant myths of our age, not a science, for the above-mentioned reasons. Religion, mostly a dire necessity on the part of the materialist metaphysical faith, has more to do with affirming the evolution of species than denying it.

Which is also a point in contention. Some say they don't know the existence of God to be a meaningful possibility. Others think differently. We already knew that.

Grunch (since I am in late):
The difference is really neglible. UFO believers certainly qualify as religious, and their religious beliefs are not stranger/less strange or more logical/less logical than that of most revealed religion as far as I can see.

* Believing in alien abductions is not weirder than believing one goes to heaven after death.
* Believing in alien technology is not weirder than believing in divinely imbued powers.
* Believing in grand governmental conspiracies is not weirder than believing in the revelations.
* Believing we might be the result of alien planting is not weirder than believing some mysterious being created us for reasons partially unknown.

etc