Our House, who do you think is going to win the Super Bowl?

I've said before I only speak for myself as a Catholic, so if you insist I be more narrow, call it One Billion. I added the other billion as a courtesy to those who believe in tenets of Christianity in one form or another as a courtesy, but if that somehow dilutes my point, fine, I'll stick to the Faith I'm well equipped to defend instead of carrying the baggage of, or justifying the actions of, in your words,

To which I brought you the lives of extraordinary saints that was met with a collective "meh." If extraordinary actions which transcend the boundaries of our humanity can't convince you that we, as humans, are much more than a conglomaration of chemical reactions briefly assembed into a relationship known as life, then I'm not sure where to take it next. God's existence won't be discerned through a thunderous voice in the sky proclaiming "I AM GOD! I AM REAL!" but rather through oblique sparks of the divine perceptible to only the human heart willing to look. Just because no one perceives the former doesn't mean it's a wise life choice to ignore the possibility of the latter.

I should have been more clear. You said that death and destruction = evil. Members of the US Army sometimes are the cause of death and destruction, since I'm assuming you don't think they're evil, you're going to have to come up with a better reason why it's so obvious that members of another religion are wrong when they do things in the name of their God.

It is easily falsifiable.

If you could find irrefutable contemporary evidence that the disciples stole Jesus' body from the tomb, Christianity would be instantly falsified.

You have to understand the culture of the time.

The disciples were running around telling people of the resurrected Jesus. They claimed to be witnesses to these things. The Jewish leadership of the time wanted to put an end to the sect that they viewed was heretical.

2) If Jesus did not actually exist, there would be a substantial record of people trying to put to rest this fantasy existence. There are no documents of the time that provide even a hint of evidence that Jesus did not exist, and on the contrary his name appears in several secular locations.

3) It is hard to justify that people "lied" about where he was buried because the Roman guard was responsible for the crucifixion. Do you think that the Roman military would just stand about idly with the big fuss that the Christians were making and not just say to them "You're being stupid. The grave is over here."

Etc.

Yes, people make up stuff today, but as I stated before, at that time in history, these stories were not taken lightly. They involved thousands of people.

In order to be convinced that Jesus is a fabrication, it would require all these people, including both secular and religious leadership, many of whom were against Jesus, to have conspired together.

Are you claiming full and complete knowledge of how the universe works?

People arrive at the conclusion that it happened because the explanations that it didn't happen just don't add up.

Scientific discovery operates in the same way. People thought for a long time that waves could only propagate through a medium. So when they understood that light was a wave they concluded that there must be an ether because otherwise it's "impossible" for light waves to reach the earth. So they searched for the effects of ether drag, and ether wind, and all that stuff, and eventually came to the conclusion that they were wrong about the necessity of ether to justify wave propagation. This caused them to change how they viewed the universe, and then progress was made.

Why doesn't it fit?

Ken Millers Books are Gold!

I know that this question wasn’t directed towards me but damn people, are you incapable of using and/or recognizing when COMMON SENSE plays a role in life? Just because this is a debate doesn’t mean good old common sense can’t take precedence. I can’t believe you could ask a question that should be so obvious to answer yourself.

"Members of the US Army sometimes are the cause of death and destruction", yes, but there’s a difference. And it’s CLEAR!


When the President says, Now tell me that you CAN'T SEE the difference in, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan' and 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq', from what That being, Allah told them to do it! Allah told them to fly airplanes into buildings and kill innocent human beings and God told President Bush to kill terrorists.

Are you kidding me? You can't DECIDE FOR YOURSELF THAT ONE IS RIGHT AND THE OTHER IS WRONG? YOU WANT TO DEBATE THIS? SERIOUSLY?

Was President Bush committing genocide? Do you ever wonder if this could be the equivalent to DEUTERONOMY 7:2 Here! Let me say it for the rest of you! JESUS, THE CHRISTIAN GOD, IS GOD and there are no others. If Islam faith supports what it has shown then IT IS WRONG! Why? COMMON F***IN SENSE!!!!!!!!!!!

Why doesn't it fit?

1) Talking snake
2) Woman formed from man's rib
3) Adam naming every beast

I could list some more but these will do for now.

Malcolm X, don't do that please.

Secular Empiricism:

Cosmologists have calculated the age of the universe to be about 13.7 billion years old. The universe started through some unknown mechanism that we can't measure so we'll say that it's beyond the scope of our philosophical world view. Then we had the creation of stars and galaxies and planets through some other mechanism that we have yet to come close to figuring out. Life seems to have started by the random collision of molecules in a primordial ooze that caused the first protein. Then through some other unknown mechanism, this protein connected with other proteins and started to form life as we know it. Over time, these life forms became more and more complex through random mutation, even though if we say it's purely random mutation, the time scales don't fit (but that's okay because it might not have purely random because it's possible for other mechanisms to account for differences, even though we don't know what they are yet).

But trust us... we know what we're talking about.

You obviously know very little about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars BigErf and to be quite frank what you have posted is a bit ridiculous. Maybe you should use some common sense.

What time scales don't fit?
What does that bit in brackets mean?

No way. Terrorism is based on reality, not ideology. Being a Muslim does not necessitate being violent. Look at Indonesian Islam, for example.

My understanding of the evidence (and I can be proven wrong here -- I wrote that off the cuff and it's somewhat tongue in cheek) is that the time scale necessary for random mutation to account for the level of biological diversity in the earlier parts of the fossil records doesn't really line up with the time scale required for such diversity to exist via random mutation alone.

The part in brackets refers to a recent article (that I don't have time to look up right now) that talked about how some proteins seem to have some self-correcting code in them, which may account for some of these things. The origins of this code is not understood.

It's not that I doubt any of this science. But it's the idea that somehow by reducing everything to something measurable or "provable" is absolutely silly. We believe lots of things about science that are far from "proved" and lots of things that aren't really "measured" (at least directly). We just take stabs at it and see how well things hold up under the evidence.

Other than the weird bit about time scales not fitting that you no doubt got from some creationist hack, this is about right. That you think the above paragraph is somehow a cut against a non-religious worldview says a lot about why you're religious. There's a very good reason most cultures that have ever existed have made up creation stories to explain the stuff they don't know. Doesn't mean there's any truth to it.

Neither does Christianity. But there are a lot of people who would argue that Islam is a violent religion whereas our (Christians) radical side gets accused of being "Jesus freaks".

says the person with no evidence.

your "extraordinary saints" do not, even a little bit, prove anything but the capability of mankind to sacrifice himself for the greater good. We don't need God in order to do this. We just need our natural-born empathy and concern for others. While it is noble and rare to see self-sacrifice like those you mentioned, it is not supernatural.

As mentioned earlier... according to you and your religion are these people evil. They too see you as the evil ones and for the most part vice versa. These bombers are "heros" among their own people.


Is this not what a suicide bomber does when giving his life for his people?

lol.... yes lets push all wars started in the name of religion under the rug. It so plain to see your beliefs are nothing but contextual. We apply these same acts of faith in other religions.. no matter how heinous they are and somehow they are different and misguided.

holy ****. So if I can find irrefutable contemporary evidence that Jesus was not born of a virgin then Christianity would be instantly falsified.

Also an army officer describing death and destruction as evil and using that as an absolute within an argument was just priceless. Gl explaining your career choice to a God who feels the same....oh wait. You could just ask his Son to forgive you and really mean it. Not to worry then.

"Then we had the creation of stars and galaxies and planets through some other mechanism that we have yet to come close to figuring out."

i think there are actually very solid models/theories about how stars/galaxies/planets are formed...

Actually, I don't think it's a cut against non-religious worldviews. I don't believe such things exist.

The foundational assumption of secular empiricism is that everything that exists is measurable. But what is this claim founded upon? Nothing. It's a faith statement. (But trust us...) Welcome to your religion.