Craig has a nice cajoling voice, he makes me feel better about my ridiculous beliefs.

Does it bother you at all that the people who are the best on this planet at verifying facts think your God is a myth?

But that was not the subject matter at hand now was it

Nope! I apologized in an edit for accidentally derailing, and then proceeded to ignore my own advice. this is a topic for another thread!

I think that the people you deem as the "best at verifying facts" are probably not the same people that I would deem as the "best at verifying facts", and I would have to ask if you feel silly that you disagree with all of the people that are the "best at verifying facts"?

I have yet to hear a single intelligent reason that has to do with any of the "experts" fields, as to why they do not believe God exists.

Nah, every topic is for every thread! But that is not what I meant anyway. I was not talking about the current dominance of Christianity, but the early 1st and 2nd century explosions.

Actually, Islam did experience remarkable growth some time after the year 700 when the Muslim empire first took over the Middle East, North Africa, then Persia. This all took place in less than 100 years to which the majority of the conquered peoples willingly converted to Islam.

Maybe I'm missing something here - why is the style in which the religion grew relevant?

I don't think the title should have thrown him off at all. Avalos could have argued that the resurrection probably didn't happen, or argued that it's very unlikely the resurrection happened, and that would have been consistent with the title.

I'm only half way through and will listen to the rest tonight (so didn't hear his conclusion yet) but I thought that was essentially what he was doing. I would have liked him to say it better (and maybe he does at the end.) I'll find out tonight!

I don't think anyone said that growth over time is the most important factor, or that it's much more important than anything else.

The Koran says a lot of things about Jesus that were written around 600 years after his death. Why should someone believe the information about Jesus in the Koran over the information about Jesus in the New Testament, which was written hundreds of years earlier?

Your dates on the gospels are wrong. They were written about 40-65 years after the death of Jesus. The letters from Paul were written around 20 years after his death. There is an important creed in 1 Corinthians 15 that contains important information on Jesus that's dated to within 5 years of the resurrection.

How much time have those people spent trying to verify their belief that God is a myth?

Who would you deem best?

We may safely infer they do not believe because God is a superstition. This is the reason.

How would you suggest someone 'verify' the fact that God is a myth? (Viz.---describe the 'verification' process for me.)

You have mentioned this one in several different posts, and I really do not see the point.
I mean Islam got the same number of followers in 1400 years that christianity got in 2000.
If anything islam had the explosion.
Since you do not seem to agree with this, I assume christianity grew faster at some point, which I really fail to see the significance of.

Bad ideas can grow at a very rapid pace too. Communism spread like wild fire in the 20 century, that does not mean it was a good system.

Thats a really interesting misread you make there. You assume I talk about what the koran has to say about Jesus. That was not my point at all.
I was comparing the 2 religions on their own merits. christianity did not get its holy book till generations after Jesus had died.
The koran was written while Mohammed lived, my point here was that islam scored better on both the criteria jibninjas mentioned as being in favor of christianity as the most credible religion.

Well, I could just take a page out of your book and find people that agree with me already and then deem then the best. Sound good?

So their reason for not believing is that they do not believe? OK. How did they go about qualifying God as a superstition?

As I've said many times, elite scientists get my vote because they have shown themselves capable of profound insight into reality. Chomsky, Minsky, Witten, Ellis, etc. So now you give me some names. Who's on your list? Why are they there?

The concept 'God' gets its meaning through the same cognitive idioms and social processes as every other concept we call a 'superstition.'

That is why God is a superstition.

The people I deem the best at verifying facts are the ones who are the preeminent fact finders and verifiers on this planet: These guys. These are the all-stars of weighing the evidence, controlling their biases, collecting, verifying and falsifying the facts, and creating overarching models to describe the implications of those facts (theories). These guys are hands down the best at wrestling whatever information we can from reality. When the vast majority of these experts (93%) think your God is a myth this should concern you (assuming you care about truth. If you don't then nevermind)

They all say the same thing in so many words: Not enough evidence. It's the same reason they don't believe Elvis is still alive or that aliens have had intimate contact with humans. This isn't that complicated. If "not enough evidence" is not an intelligent reason then I don't know what is. If you think you're more qualified at deciding what is sufficient evidence than these experts are then the conversation will have to end here because you would have to be severely deluded and I have no idea how to deal with that.

I keep using his name because I'm genuinely baffled that I can't get you to say: "There's certainly a strong possibility that Noam Chomsky is right and and I am wrong. But that's not enough to change my beliefs."

Shouldn't that be easy for you to say?! I don't understand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x8vvySK-YI&feature=sub

told ya WLC is a dishonest creotard douchebag

The default position is not to believe a claim. Only evidence can make it reasonable to accept something as true. You are trying to have it the other way around.
If we had to accept peoples claims untill they could be proven wrong, we would have to believe a ton of rediculous, not to mention contradictory things.
One consequence of the logic you present here, would be that every religious claim ever made, would have to be accepted as true.

A superstitious belief is simply one that is unsupported by evidence. The word is off course mostly used as an insult, but technically any religious belief is superstitious.

Sure they have and are. Just not by you.

how convenient

Change "best at veryfying facts" to best at figuring out how to build a rocketship and land it on Mars or best at figuring out how to invent an Ipod or best at preventing an asteroid from colliding with Earth. Or even best at playing backgammon. Any skill that requires the ability to come up answers that leave little room for opinion find that the best practitioners are less likely to be religious by far than the general population. For instance what percent of those who fully understand the General Theory of Relativity believe in a personal Christian God?