I`m here to gather up other Christian Poker Players, not to argue with you. I`m not going to waste my words on you if your mind is made up, and you certainly shouldn`t waste your words with me because I am NEVER changing my mind....

Hmmm.

lilprog, your personal experiences and stories ARE appreciated. Not many have the balls to post that kind of thing on a random internet forum.

I appreciate it because it shows how a faith-based belief system works. What seems like a perfect example of answered prayer, and a "one-outer" to you, looks to me like a perfect example of someone taking a coincidence, and making it a miracle.

Yes, it COULD have been a miracle, and the intervention of your prayers, to cause that kid to happen to show up in the 5 minutes you were praying. Or it was a coincidence.

I'm going to choose the more likely scenerio.

And if your thinking through all the possibilities and choosing to believe its a coincidence then thats fine I can respect that, but thats completely different then just being set out to decide that any thing i say is a coincidence and not even give it thought.

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What do you know about the distribution of possible locations and what about that information makes your conclusion "likely"?

I'm asserting two things (1) it's more likely than not for a runaway to be outside of the prerequisite ~1 square mile surrounding their house if the police are already searching for a body and (2) that if a child returns home they've more likely than not decided to go home before the designated cutoff of 5-7 minutes.

As an exaggerated example, if the group started praying and within 5 seconds the child opened the front door, it's almost impossible for the group prayer to have affected the child's decision to return home.

I agree with with this completely.

It seems like asdfasdf32 is really going out of his way to be rude, difficult, and essentially mock lilprog. I respect RoundGuy's ability to debate and state his case while remaining civil and not seeking confrontation. Even though I also disagree with his final conclusion.

I dare you to spend the next 30 days praying and asking God if he is real to change your heart and for him to reveal himself to you. I guarantee you one way or another you will not make it 30 days... You will quit or God will change your heart but you absolutely will not pray that prayer sincerely for 30 days....

I would just like to point out it's probably impossible to sincerely pray to something which you don't believe exists. As an example, you couldn't sincerely pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We could both fake it though.

Please post an example where I haven't been civil.

Read my post again. I said you were being purposely difficult, rude, and essentially mocking lilprog. I credited RoundGuy for his ability to be civil and debate in a proper manner.

But sure if you will, when one is difficult, rude, and mocks another person in a debate. Then they are not being too civil

Asdfasdf32,

I just think RoundGuy goes at it in a much better way than you do. I have read a lot of your posts and that is how I feel. It's not like I really expected for you to agree with my assessment of yourself anyways. Don't think this is just because you do not believe in God either. A few of the other theists on this forum annoy me more than you ever could.

I'll freely admit to being difficult, but that's expected when you make grandiose claims. If I were to come in here and declare my uncle survived cancer due to his Guardian Pixie, is everyone supposed to take my claim at face value?

With regard to being rude or mockingly derisive, I think I've made one post of this nature in the entirely of this thread when I quipped about God showing favoritism to lilprog instead of helping starving children. And even that was a valid objection.

That's fair, and you may be right. I try not to coddle anyone because I don't wish to be coddled with respect to any erroneous beliefs that I might hold.

lilprog happens to be catching me on a good week. It's 102 outside, and I have air conditioning.

Personally I believe we should be cordial, respectful, and coddle each other with whatever beliefs(or lack of) the other may have. I personally am annoyed just as much by militant, loud, and confrontational Christians as I am Atheists. (I'm not saying you are this either) Regardless, I do not think that is the proper way of going about such things. You nor I can show the other proof right now as to who's beliefs are correct. Although you may not agree with what I believe in, I genuinely respect and love you as a person, even though I do not know you. I see no need to be difficult with each other. We are still the same beings in this life together. Maybe you should be less difficult when dealing with theists? That is just my opinion and it is solely up to you.

Regardless, your avatar is cool. I stare at it and get sucked in for 20 seconds at a time regularly

I'm fine with cordial and respectful, but I cannot for the life of me see how coddling someone's misguided beliefs can ever be a good thing. I will, of course, make exceptions if someone is in a delicate frame of mind (death in the family, poor health, etc).

I'm still unsure how I can not be difficult while simultaneously declaring someone's core beliefs to be completely invalid. Do you simply nod agreeingly when a Scientologist declares that 75 million years ago the Galactic Confederacy brought billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs?*

*Yes, that was accurate if you're not familiar with their beliefs.

I agree.

This is place for debate and discussion amongst people who have strongly held but different beliefs about religion and god. Thus, we should all expect to have our views challenged. However, as regulars, we should also strive to make this forum a place that is enjoyable for new people to drop by and discuss their own ideas. This means that we should try to respect the actual topics those people wish to discuss instead of forcing them to just discuss the same issues that have been covered many times before.

For instance, a number of people have expressed appreciation for CoachKirby's writing about his experience leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses. In his thread discussing this, it isn't really appropriate for theists to start arguing with him about the arguments for or against Christianity (or theism). Similarly, lilprog here has a fairly specific issue that he is interested in discussing, and so it is also inappropriate to immediately start in with arguing for or against Christianity (or theism).

Try treating new posters here in RGT as new guests that you want to get to know a bit before attacking their beliefs. And don't kid yourself: attacking someone's religious beliefs is a matter of attacking something that is very personal and often very important to that person. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. But it does mean that you should think about the social contexts in which it is appropriate to do so.

I completely agree, and if you notice I didn't post in this thread until it had already been derailed (quite quickly I might add). I apologize to the OP for further contributing to the derailment, and for being the prime mover after the initial derailment had built up speed.

I would be fine with him (re)posting his OP so it can serve its original purpose.

The definition of coddle as I'm sure you know, is to treat with excessive care of kindness. So yes even if I don't agree for instance with Islam or even Scientology, I believe I should at least be kind and treat it with care in a manner to not disrespect it blatantly in an attempt to arouse confrontation with an individual of that faith. Granted, you were by no means going that far. But that is sort of what I was trying to get at. Although I have my own beliefs and faith, I still respect everyone else's.

No I would not just simply nod and agree. But I still feel you can disagree with someone's core beliefs and debate in a manner to not be purposely difficult(which you admitted to), mocking, and disrespectful.

Well said.

I'm going to let this one go. The irony is just too much for me to debate the meaning of difficult while trying not to be difficult.

We'll talk again when you have a few hundred posts in RGT.

I have no idea what is making you think there's a radius that creates the transition between a search for a body and a search for a live person. The "searching for a body" (as far as I know) is not bounded by physical distance. It could be tied to the particular details of the written note, as well as the circumstances within the family. However, it's most likely tied to the amount of time that has elapsed since the discovery.

OP stated that it's the end of a 3 day retreat, so the child has been potentially missing for four days. (I somehow recall that it's 24 hours before a missing person report can be filed -- although this has changed with the implementation of the Amber Alert system, but this is only applied to children, and even then I don't think it's a formal missing person report. But either way, if the police are involved, it's not as if the child has been gone for an afternoon.)

As to the location, in an area with a lot of cover (cornfields, forest), it's easy to hide if you're trying to hide. You don't need to go very far to become invisible. Most search and rescue operations operate with the assumption that the lost person wants to be found, so there's a lot of calling out and that sort of thing. If you're trying to hide, all of that calling out simply lets you know where the searchers are located, and you can avoid them fairly easily.

See above. You don't have to be deep in the woods to have a good hiding place.

I think you're assuming a lot of things here. You can imagine a situation where the child is at the door, but afraid of what the parents will say/do now that the police are involved (or hears someone saying something upsetting in the house), and decides to turn around rather than confront the embarrassment/shame/whatever is associated with what has happened. I'm not going to say much on this end because there are all sorts of possibilities, as it's a very complex situation and I can't say with any level of confidence which class of scenarios is actually more likely.

The primary point that simplistic modeling is probably a pretty ineffective way of approaching the problem.

I'm not sure what a few hundred posts would change. I've lived and acted the same way for the past seven years now. I live in a melting pot of a city and have came across and spoken to individuals of very many different faiths. Also working the medical field I have been in the homes and encountered people of many religions and beliefs. Nor am I biased to attack anyone who doesn't believe what I do. I am highly critical and vocal of fellow Christians who preach what I consider to be false doctrine. I just sincerely believe we could all be a bit more pleasant and cordial when we debate and speak religions amongst each other.

Ah Aaron, I see you haven't changed in years.

Why assume the most likely, when you can twist, distort, dream, and make up all sorts of otherwise stupid bull-****?

I don't blame you. Religious zealots have been doing it for millenia.