God My Healer.

[fishbuff]

- how do i know god exist beyond the bible?
I believe God has left early traces of His presence. The earliest evolved into the Jewish beliefs today. One don't bake a cake for nothing. One don't design a house for nothing. If God created man He must have a plan for them and get them to know Him.

- has the evidence should such existence?
I named what is called the Kalam Cosmological Argument - whatever that begins to exist has a cause, which means something cannot come out of nothing, uncaused. Till now, I do not know how I can be accused of being unrealistic, illogicial, lost in unrealism when my belief is, to me, only a mere a logical conclusion that something cannot appear uncaused.

- is my justification skewed and prejudiced?
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I believe what gives me a better alternative.

- have i really face the truth?
Yes.

- can i ask hard questions?
Yes. I did my own investigation.

- there are so many "science" out there trying to prove a 6000 years old earth
I am personally a young earth believer as well. I do think men if existed on earth for millions of years, made progress only in the last couple thousand of years, that automatically tells a sane person that the odds of this theory against probability is rather unrealistically skewed. If I have an electronic product that gives me 1 year warranty, starts/warms up only after 11 months and breaks down usually after 2 months of using, men would have no use for such an invention.
.

young earth and creationism? please do a search on the net and see just what kind of universities teach creationism. Only the biblical ones, not those standford, yale, cornell, MIT etc.

are you familiar with Modus Tollen? if premises satisfy conditions then outcomes, else not. to understand the origin of creationism briefly, religions in the past has been the dominating force. until recently starting from the 1920 onward, the major paradigm has shifted to science slowly. So in order to justify their religions, research and datas have to be skewed; aka... if premises dont give you the outcome you want, you mess with the premises, so that the outcome is biased.

science or research, to what i understand in my feeble mind, start with a blank canvass and curiosity. to understand certain occurrence, objects or facts, you first come out with hypothesis, then set out the plans to tackle this, gather the data or construct a lab to test, derive the theory and work toward it. that in my uneducated mind, is science.. impartial, inquistive and forward looking.

whereas in creationist research, first you set that all test MUST point to the existence of God, then apply all the the above, then argue and rearuge to adjust the hypothesis to force it back to the original objective. That is skewed research... somewhat like Oil companies financing scientists to prove that global warming is fake.

 

[Perspective]

well, my opinion is; if i seek victory in our debate, i will seek to defeat you with facts. But if i seek the truth in our debate, i will help you to refine your questions. i do seek the latter, im happy to proceed on with further discussion if you like.

I appreciate your openness, but don't really understand the premise of this. To me facts and truth are hardly used as opposites to each other, and even used as synonyms, but maybe I am wrong about your definition.

kalam cosmoslogical argument defined the reasonings but the premise used in the argument to deduce the outcomes are flawed. We cannot be always derive everything back to the human and only us that matter. anyway, this is a lengthy philosophical discussion, please browse this video debunking the KCA.

The video has the wrong premise in two areas. First, the Kalam argument is not a scientific one, but a philosophical one. Hence, a 28-minute lesson on popular terminology used in physics, albeit in related topic on the universe, went lost into a black hole itself. And hence, secondly, it follows that it ended up doing nothing to rebut the argument but stated an opinion. I say I saw a zebra and another one says no that's a horse or zebras can't be found here, but here I say I saw a zebra and it responds that chicken meat is delicious. If it thinks the first cause is not God, say so instead of giving physics lessons, even expressing disagreement on the figure of infinite temperature not being 8-decimal point that has nothing to do with Kalam. Is it because there is not enough substance that it seeks to confuse. I would think it would be more helpful before embedding videos or "piak"-ing a long list of "bible contradictions", read through them instead of borrowing a grenade thinking it's a pineapple - even though debates are interesting, wasting bandwidth isn't.

not really, there are debates that jesus didnt come in flesh but as spirit that inherit a human body, others state that jesus came as a man, crucificed and rose to become god. the combinations are there, including marcion that insist doing the whole old testament away as he had seen the cruelty in the OT. dont forget the cathars. so there are many variations, it is thru' the relentless persecution of st augustine and the subsequent popes that most of these variations are wiped out and you have a vatican church which set to rule for the next 1500 years without constest until martin luther. but that is another set of histories.what im getting here is; joseph smith of the mormom, mohammed, mithras, etc etc are all characters in the histories that came up with some belief systems and people did actually followed them. Now you can have peaceful existence among the multitude of faith or you can preach absolute dominance or intolerance to others. (remember? jealous god? smithing this and that idols?). I always say; the history is ALWAYS written by the victors, not the defeatists. So in this situation, the vaticans won with the help of emperor constantine. remember Qin Shi Huang? he tried to burn out the existence of all china's past history books, journals and executed the scholars? why? to wipe out all that he thought that should not exist.

You are correct that people have different versions and interpretations but the key thing was the testaments of people who knew Jesus in person and were with Him in person. No matter how one digs into the details for "contradictions", they all uniformly point out to several key factors - He existed, was the Son of God, was crucified and rose from the dead. Even atheist scholars do not believe that the gospels were invented or faked. They attribute to hallucinations, didn't really die, twin brother etc. in other words people who were "fooled". That is another argument for another day, but what would be the closest testimonies are by people who knew Jesus, not Joseph Smith. I gather that this is the second time that the "weakest link" argument has been used - as long as someone misused and misdefines Christianity, Christianity itself becomes bad. That is flawed and like saying that because there were many Chinese criminals, Chinese are criminals including you and me, which I believe you would not agree.

And if the british didnt conquer 3/4 of the world in the 17-19th century, will we be speaking english and believe in christianity? i dont think so.

That's another flawed premise. It was the missionaries, not the army, that people become Christians. While many countries were under the British, China isn't and Christians had been visiting the place and its Christian population is increasing all the time. South Korea had been controlled by European countries but Christianity spread only of late when it is now more free of western influence. Christianity continues to spread despite the rise of more autonomous, non-"ang mo" countries.

yes, i understand and i dont seek to convert nor ridicule whatever you and i have. but fact is fact and here in sammyboymod forum, we battle out in anonymity and as i said before; iron sharpen iron, mind sharpen mind. we never know how strong our tea is until we put them in hot water. likewise, we are subjecting ourselves to a constant intellectual debate to test our mettle. I too had been going to church for 20 years, and all along i have my doubts. i ignored it for a long time until i reach here, and being in IT guy which a certain inclination toward academic studies and logic/reasoning, i then subject my christian belief to logic/reasoning, turned out i became christian pluralist, ignorant, then agnostic, then atheist. It is not an overnight progression but a gradual process. i borrowed an example from the net; when i decide to drop the belief off; i was afraid, like a man hanging on the end of the rope and afraid of falling into a pit black darkness. when i took courage and let go, i found out i landed on the ground just some inches below.

Well, I think we have both described our stories and you have more than me, because I tend to dislike repeating. To be frank, those claims however true to do not gel with me. Popular atheist Michael Shermer has one claim among his credentials when debating with the likes of Craig and Lennox - that he was a pious Church attending Christian for a long time of years and years, yet during his debate with "Case For Faith" interviewee and New Testament Scholar Ben Witherington claimed that the prophecy that Jesus was born in Nazareth was untrue. Even as a 2-year Christian, I never knew Jesus was born in Nazareth but in Bethlelem.

i borrowed an example from the net; when i decide to drop the belief off; i was afraid, like a man hanging on the end of the rope and afraid of falling into a pit black darkness. when i took courage and let go, i found out i landed on the ground just some inches below.

I am not sure what you were afraid of, not that I agree with your decision. I don't go into a relationship with God just being afraid of not doing so. It seemed more like afraid of losing a certain kind of life you were in, but I don't want to presuppose.

 

[Perspective]

young earth and creationism? please do a search on the net and see just what kind of universities teach creationism. Only the biblical ones, not those standford, yale, cornell, MIT etc.

are you familiar with Modus Tollen? if premises satisfy conditions then outcomes, else not. to understand the origin of creationism briefly, religions in the past has been the dominating force. until recently starting from the 1920 onward, the major paradigm has shifted to science slowly. So in order to justify their religions, research and datas have to be skewed; aka... if premises dont give you the outcome you want, you mess with the premises, so that the outcome is biased.

science or research, to what i understand in my feeble mind, start with a blank canvass and curiosity. to understand certain occurrence, objects or facts, you first come out with hypothesis, then set out the plans to tackle this, gather the data or construct a lab to test, derive the theory and work toward it. that in my uneducated mind, is science.. impartial, inquistive and forward looking.

whereas in creationist research, first you set that all test MUST point to the existence of God, then apply all the the above, then argue and rearuge to adjust the hypothesis to force it back to the original objective. That is skewed research... somewhat like Oil companies financing scientists to prove that global warming is fake.

I am aware of that and nothing of what I wrote stated otherwise. It does reveal that scientificism in advocacy isn't all that democratic or that Christianity and science are both guilty of shoving things down people's throats - but this is not relevant to the arguments that was there.

As for the next 3 paragraphs, it is again false premise and a presupposition because scattered around this thread I stated my initial views before becoming Christian:

1) Something does not come out of nothing. Even relativity, singularity, heat and density (yes all those from the voluptuous video no pun intended) comes from something, they hold mathematical theories, can be derived from finite formulas and occur in a context of a universe where the maths itself already exist and maths also do not come about from nothing.

2) Feathers do not become dinosaur scales or the other way around.

3) Men is far ahead and very different from animals.

4) Human progress is made only within 5,000 years despite men being around for...?

There are others, but there is no need to be elaborate here. So, I found the bible on these matters, albeit brief.

 

[drifter]

I appreciate your openness, but don't really understand the premise of this. To me facts and truth are hardly used as opposites to each other, and even used as synonyms, but maybe I am wrong about your definition.



The video has the wrong premise in two areas. First, the Kalam argument is not a scientific one, but a philosophical one. Hence, a 28-minute lesson on popular terminology used in physics, albeit in related topic on the universe, went lost into a black hole itself. And hence, secondly, it follows that it ended up doing nothing to rebut the argument but stated an opinion. I say I saw a zebra and another one says no that's a horse or zebras can't be found here, but here I say I saw a zebra and it responds that chicken meat is delicious. If it thinks the first cause is not God, say so instead of giving physics lessons, even expressing disagreement on the figure of infinite temperature not being 8-decimal point that has nothing to do with Kalam. Is it because there is not enough substance that it seeks to confuse. I would think it would be more helpful before embedding videos or "piak"-ing a long list of "bible contradictions", read through them instead of borrowing a grenade thinking it's a pineapple - even though debates are interesting, wasting bandwidth isn't.



You are correct that people have different versions and interpretations but the key thing was the testaments of people who knew Jesus in person and were with Him in person. No matter how one digs into the details for "contradictions", they all uniformly point out to several key factors - He existed, was the Son of God, was crucified and rose from the dead. Even atheist scholars do not believe that the gospels were invented or faked. They attribute to hallucinations, didn't really die, twin brother etc. in other words people who were "fooled". That is another argument for another day, but what would be the closest testimonies are by people who knew Jesus, not Joseph Smith. I gather that this is the second time that the "weakest link" argument has been used - as long as someone misused and misdefines Christianity, Christianity itself becomes bad. That is flawed and like saying that because there were many Chinese criminals, Chinese are criminals including you and me, which I believe you would not agree.



That's another flawed premise. It was the missionaries, not the army, that people become Christians. While many countries were under the British, China isn't and Christians had been visiting the place and its Christian population is increasing all the time. South Korea had been controlled by European countries but Christianity spread only of late when it is now more free of western influence. Christianity continues to spread despite the rise of more autonomous, non-"ang mo" countries.



Well, I think we have both described our stories and you have more than me, because I tend to dislike repeating. To be frank, those claims however true to do not gel with me. Popular atheist Michael Shermer has one claim among his credentials when debating with the likes of Craig and Lennox - that he was a pious Church attending Christian for a long time of years and years, yet during his debate with "Case For Faith" interviewee and New Testament Scholar Ben Witherington claimed that the prophecy that Jesus was born in Nazareth was untrue. Even as a 2-year Christian, I never knew Jesus was born in Nazareth but in Bethlelem.



I am not sure what you were afraid of, not that I agree with your decision. I don't go into a relationship with God just being afraid of not doing so. It seemed more like afraid of losing a certain kind of life you were in, but I don't want to presuppose.

1) " I would think it would be more helpful before embedding videos or "piak"-ing a long list of "bible contradictions", read through them instead of borrowing a grenade thinking it's a pineapple - even though debates are interesting, wasting bandwidth isn't ".


faith is belief without and against evidence and reason; coincidentally thats also the definition of delusion..truth is that which stands up to any degree of questioning the only words missing from your story book are once upon a time and happily ever after .


2) " people have different versions and interpretations but the key thing was the testaments of people who knew Jesus in person and were with Him in person. No matter how one digs into the details for "contradictions", they all uniformly point out to several key factors - He existed, was the Son of God, was crucified and rose from the dead "


if you tell a lie long enough, people will think its the truth. and that is how your cult began morals are not taught in the bible, obedience is. if your god is real then we might as well let Santa Claus and the easter bunny come out of hiding too . men who believe a man could walk on water will believe anything... let me remind you again...ancient or age-old are not synonym of Facts &amp, Evidence. a lie is a lie even if everyone believes it . get it ?


3) " as long as someone misused and misdefines Christianity, Christianity itself becomes bad. That is flawed and like saying that because there were many Chinese criminals, Chinese are criminals including you and me, which I believe you would not agree .


history teaches us that no other cause has brought more death than the word of invisibleman created by human .millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. what has been the effect of coercion? to make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.



4) " That's another flawed premise. It was the missionaries, not the army, that people become Christians. While many countries were under the British, China isn't and Christians had been visiting the place and its Christian population is increasing all the time. South Korea had been controlled by European countries but Christianity spread only of late when it is now more free of western influence. Christianity continues to spread despite the rise of more autonomous, non-"ang mo" countries "


yes ..we all know that christianity works like a MLM ...





PS: You can`t use the bible to prove the bible don`t let your imagination be decided for you

 

[Perspective]

I really have nothing to add if it is going to be the same points ad nauseous, if you don't mind, but you are welcomed to reply to my posts.

 

[drifter]

I really have nothing to add if it is going to be the same points ad nauseous, if you don't mind, but you are welcomed to reply to my posts.

whahahahha....another dumb christain trying to snake away ....

 

[fishbuff]

I am aware of that and nothing of what I wrote stated otherwise. It does reveal that scientificism in advocacy isn't all that democratic or that Christianity and science are both guilty of shoving things down people's throats - but this is not relevant to the arguments that was there.

As for the next 3 paragraphs, it is again false premise and a presupposition because scattered around this thread I stated my initial views before becoming Christian:

1) Something does not come out of nothing. Even relativity, singularity, heat and density (yes all those from the voluptuous video no pun intended) comes from something, they hold mathematical theories, can be derived from finite formulas and occur in a context of a universe where the maths itself already exist and maths also do not come about from nothing.

2) Feathers do not become dinosaur scales or the other way around.

3) Men is far ahead and very different from animals.

4) Human progress is made only within 5,000 years despite men being around for...?

There are others, but there is no need to be elaborate here. So, I found the bible on these matters, albeit brief.

for the KCA, i dont have the background to argue on that. even as what you say that is is philosophical, but to skew the argument towards theism is also very flawed as you have steered the outcome to a desired expectation, rather than letting it to run the course of logic and reasoning. As what you had said before, if you can argue about the big, complex universe with such ternacious scientific logic, how can you infer all these to a preacher in the old israel who preached for 3 years and all books written about him by authors who have not beared direct witnessses to him, nor traceable by historical fact of his existence.


1) Something does not come out of nothing. Even relativity, singularity, heat and density (yes all those from the voluptuous video no pun intended) comes from something, they hold mathematical theories, can be derived from finite formulas and occur in a context of a universe where the maths itself already exist and maths also do not come about from nothing.

if you can ask these questions and try to piece them to a god, then why jesus? why not allah or jewish yahweh? why not odin? su mukong? why the western abrahamic faith hold so much preference in your selection? why not islam? what is your justification for sidestepping them? is it because it didnt get propagated by the colonial western powers like the british and the french?

2) Feathers do not become dinosaur scales or the other way around.
difference between a macro and a micro evolution. how come masupials are only found in australia and no where else? why are there dinosuars' bones? kiwi are found in NZ only.. how it become flightless? so did the Moa or the elephant bird of madagascar? how come not all over the places? why are there homo erectus skulls and bones that bear near similar phsyiological structure but not exactly the same? how did the south americans; mayans and incas managed to sail over to the continent of america so quickly if based on the 4000 years old Noah's story? did god teleport them there?

3) Men is far ahead and very different from animals.

fail. men and chimpanzees/gorillas come from same primates, bearing 98% similarity. i know what you will say, there is a 2% difference. But let say you saw two near identical empire state building side by side, but one has 1-2 storeys less. can you claim that their are very different even the structure design are exactly the same?

4) Human progress is made only within 5,000 years despite men being around for...?
australian aborigines have been around for ages, did they leave any traces for the archeologists to discover about their past? No! they are hunters/gathers, no major buildings were constructed that last thru' time like the great pyramid. so can you claim that they dont exist not even 500 years ago before the british discover australia?
there was an underwater city founded off the coast of okinawa, japan that backdated 11,000 years ago, check this on the net and youtube. hows that for early civilization? what about those pyramids in america and egypt? the earliest is 5000 years old. surely noah's family reproduce fast enough to repopulate the whole planet in just less than a few hundred years, and i cant believe the number of abnormalities if both Noah's sons and daughters mate with each other to reproduce! from a single family, how can there be so many races with so many genetic variations in races and regions? dont tell me! babel incident. ya, riiiiiight.

come on, you were an atheist before, surely you have thought of these questions before.. stop kidding yourself. i surrendered my logic to think about the bible long ago and now i had regained back. I cant believe you surrendered so late in your life. Im sure the only way that you could have go into religions is;
- you met your gf/wife who compell you to change.
- your colleague/boss hold influences over you and force you to change.
- you were raised in a religious home and your parents indoctrinate you.
- you met with some serious incidents and you had to rely on religions as logic failed you.

if you convert for circumstances 1,3,4, i fully understand. however, no one will be sane enough to walk into a church/mormon/JW and wish to be brainwashed. "oh, let me tell you about a god who create everthing in 6 days, and need a rest (why rest?). create man/woman, talking snake, whole flood, noah's family mate with each other, god kill here, there, everywhere... but still love you, prepare hell for you if you musterbate, then come back in relevation to burn everyone who didnt stroke his ego to hell! but still love you."

 

[drifter]

fishbuff ...you are doing a great job here ...points for your logical thinking .

 

[fishbuff]

I appreciate your openness, but don't really understand the premise of this. To me facts and truth are hardly used as opposites to each other, and even used as synonyms, but maybe I am wrong about your definition.

it is abit philosophical on this one. may take some time to internalize it.

The video has the wrong premise in two areas. First, the Kalam argument is not a scientific one, but a philosophical one. Hence, a 28-minute lesson on popular terminology used in physics, albeit in related topic on the universe, went lost into a black hole itself. And hence, secondly, it follows that it ended up doing nothing to rebut the argument but stated an opinion. I say I saw a zebra and another one says no that's a horse or zebras can't be found here, but here I say I saw a zebra and it responds that chicken meat is delicious. If it thinks the first cause is not God, say so instead of giving physics lessons, even expressing disagreement on the figure of infinite temperature not being 8-decimal point that has nothing to do with Kalam. Is it because there is not enough substance that it seeks to confuse. I would think it would be more helpful before embedding videos or "piak"-ing a long list of "bible contradictions", read through them instead of borrowing a grenade thinking it's a pineapple - even though debates are interesting, wasting bandwidth isn't.

sure, i believe you have the reasoning skills to rationalize the KCA, but surely, how did you managed to work it back to jesus? with so many religions out there, i can work it back to the su mukong, kwan yin, allah, vishu, hanuma etc? is your consideration biased or unbiased? are you swinging your justification to jesus because you are involved in it and no one else?

nothing is infinite in the universe. ask any physicists. there is a time limited to all things, they worked the age of the known universe to 13.75 billion years based on observal expansion rate of the universe and worked out by the comoslogists and physicts. why would i trust some old biblical writings backdated 3000 years ago that state the world has 4 corners, flat and float on a tortoise's back?

You are correct that people have different versions and interpretations but the key thing was the testaments of people who knew Jesus in person and were with Him in person. No matter how one digs into the details for "contradictions", they all uniformly point out to several key factors - He existed, was the Son of God, was crucified and rose from the dead. Even atheist scholars do not believe that the gospels were invented or faked. They attribute to hallucinations, didn't really die, twin brother etc. in other words people who were "fooled". That is another argument for another day, but what would be the closest testimonies are by people who knew Jesus, not Joseph Smith. I gather that this is the second time that the "weakest link" argument has been used - as long as someone misused and misdefines Christianity, Christianity itself becomes bad. That is flawed and like saying that because there were many Chinese criminals, Chinese are criminals including you and me, which I believe you would not agree.

as an ex-believer, probably i can empathized your current unflinching loyalty to the bible without batting an eye.
i recommend these two books for you to read. both are written by pastors who are skilled in the bible.
Dishonest Church. http://www.amazon.com/Dishonest-Church-Jack-Good/dp/1878282077

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512/ref=pd_sim_b_1

i know you will say why should yo read them? well, as said before, you never know how strong your tea is until you put in hot water. aka to the test.

Ask your pastor about the early church, the variations, the struggle and based only on historical facts, not bible. see how he respond. I strongly believe he will say; "oh the past has some errors, but have faith in god that everything is fine." what he is trying to say is; "believe what you are told, and stop bothering me with all these questions!" i had pastors telling that before, smirking when i question and they got pretty defensive and at time, hostile. Gee,, as if im trying to bust their chops.

That's another flawed premise. It was the missionaries, not the army, that people become Christians. While many countries were under the British, China isn't and Christians had been visiting the place and its Christian population is increasing all the time. South Korea had been controlled by European countries but Christianity spread only of late when it is now more free of western influence. Christianity continues to spread despite the rise of more autonomous, non-"ang mo" countries.

come on, when the conquisitors went into america, they didnt bring their faith with them? when the 8 legions went into china, they didnt take their faith with them there? have you read about the Goa inquistion from st Xavier against the indians?

our asian culture,... sigh.. from confucius time have been rote learning and little critical thinking. even this you have to agree with us. given people like korea, the strict upbringing and rote learning style left them with very little individualistic's characters. nothing but a serfs to the society. Just like PAP and the common singaporeans. back in the 60, 70, 80 where internet didnt take shape, all media were controlled by the govt. The medias report nothing but good things about LKY and PAP.. we are worshipped them... that is until internet come about. Now MDA want to contain it.

Information is power, both the churches are trying to dissuade their congregations from reading too much on the net, and so is MDA, trying to protect the PAP's power.

atheism is somewhat like the arab's spring rebellion. it is time to rebel against dogmas with knowledge and rights.

Well, I think we have both described our stories and you have more than me, because I tend to dislike repeating. To be frank, those claims however true to do not gel with me. Popular atheist Michael Shermer has one claim among his credentials when debating with the likes of Craig and Lennox - that he was a pious Church attending Christian for a long time of years and years, yet during his debate with "Case For Faith" interviewee and New Testament Scholar Ben Witherington claimed that the prophecy that Jesus was born in Nazareth was untrue. Even as a 2-year Christian, I never knew Jesus was born in Nazareth but in Bethlelem.

i like to share this story with you;
in north korea, there was this man who had cataracts in his eyes and he couldnt see for years. hospitals there were either not equipped to do this or only the privileged one can afford to get quality health care. There was this western doctor who flew in and gave free eye surgery. After he operated on him, this old man can see again!! he was happy and rejoice. and do you know who was the first one he turned to to say thanks and praise? KIM JONG IL!!! not the doctor!.. he lapsed heaps of praises, kneel and rejoice loudly in front of the great leader's poster.


like wise, when people get serious illness like cancer, they ran to the hospital to seek medical help/chemeotheraphy, but when they are healed, they gave thanks to god!.. but why seek the doctor's help if you think your faith can heal you?

back in the medival times where bubonic plague reigned, 3/4 of the europeans populations died. they were christian believers. why they have to die? before vacinnation of small pox, pencillin, and all the current medical drugs, how many people had died from pox, malaria, cholera, famine, etc? you might attribute to god's plan. but someone you knew is dying from such diseases and calamity? can you tell them that it is god's plan that they must suffer and die? or would you ask them to seek medicial science for help? i leave this to you to answer. i struggled with this for many years too and refused to face the truth.

 

[fishbuff]

in addition to the above, i would like to quote part of mathew 13:13
"For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand."

there scientific facts, historical facts, logic, reasoning, common sense, comparison between fairy tales and reality, a.k.a. cognitive intelligence, everything is there...

why suspend your rational thought when it comes to religion?

 

[drifter]

i am the creator and the destroyer, i am he that defines all worlds. i bring life to the lifeless, i rain death on all that lives. my judgement is supreme. i encompass all things, i am the progenitor of good and evil. i created sin, i cause its every pain. hell is of my works so is heaven . i am the source of all gods. i create gods on a whim, i destroy gods with a thought. i am man.

 

[drifter]

in addition to the above, i would like to quote part of mathew 13:13
"For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand."

there scientific facts, historical facts, logic, reasoning, common sense, comparison between fairy tales and reality, a.k.a. cognitive intelligence, everything is there...

why does the religious people cannot see through it?

those who believe a man could walk on water will believe anything...

 

[fishbuff]

those who believe a man could walk on water will believe anything...

probably he could have worn these type of shoes.

 

[Perspective]

fishbuff ...you are doing a great job here ...points for your logical thinking .

Unfortunately for you, I have to agree that it's the case in comparison to yours.

 

[Perspective]

for the KCA, i dont have the background to argue on that. even as what you say that is is philosophical, but to skew the argument towards theism is also very flawed as you have steered the outcome to a desired expectation, rather than letting it to run the course of logic and reasoning. As what you had said before, if you can argue about the big, complex universe with such ternacious scientific logic, how can you infer all these to a preacher in the old israel who preached for 3 years and all books written about him by authors who have not beared direct witnessses to him, nor traceable by historical fact of his existence.

I think the premise that theism is automatically illogical and unreasonable is flawed. Of course, you have given other reasons not to believe in a God, so I won't hold you on this one, but this "default mindset" is what you need to be rid of in any discussion on anything. I don't wish to act like a saint and admit I may be biased because I find it difficult to overturn my belief that the universe is self-caused or uncaused, but I do not start from a premise of biase, which is a different thing. On Jesus, I do not agree that the authors did not bear witness to Him. This is attested also by independent historical sources such as Josephus. I think I have gone through that - even hardly atheists claim He did not exist and I do not see it necessary to repeat this point as well.

if you can ask these questions and try to piece them to a god, then why jesus? why not allah or jewish yahweh? why not odin? su mukong? why the western abrahamic faith hold so much preference in your selection? why not islam? what is your justification for sidestepping them? is it because it didnt get propagated by the colonial western powers like the british and the french?

The broad singular difference between Christianity and Islam or Judaism is the belief that Jesus was the Messiah. If I believe, then I am a Christian or Messianic Jew. It doesn't make sense for me to believe Jesus is God and be a Muslim. But all they are theism and I am quite unsure as to why you are interested in the differences since you aren't a theist in the first place. As for other religions, I view them as largely paganistic because they can all be traced to a storywriter. For example, Sun Wukong was written by Wu Chengen. If people went that way, they would be worshipping Optimus Prime in 100 years time. I don't invent the God that invents me.

difference between a macro and a micro evolution. how come masupials are only found in australia and no where else? why are there dinosuars' bones? kiwi are found in NZ only.. how it become flightless? so did the Moa or the elephant bird of madagascar? how come not all over the places? why are there homo erectus skulls and bones that bear near similar phsyiological structure but not exactly the same? how did the south americans; mayans and incas managed to sail over to the continent of america so quickly if based on the 4000 years old Noah's story? did god teleport them there?

Kindly do not digress. My point was that animals contain properties showing even macro-evolution would not explain the differences or the complexity of life. I see the platypus with duck's beak, cobra's poison and beaver's fur and it tells me it cannot be "evoluted" from different animals. I don't see location or exclusivity of location having anything to do with the issue because we are talking about 4,000 years as you said and not 4 years. By the way, it is recorded possible that someone can walk around the earth within 10 years including sailing the seas. The only noteworthy point here was the dinosaur bones, which I attribute to the great flood. My science knowledge might be limited, but my view tells me that death doesn't give you fossils, it gives you decomposition. The issue here is that anyone rebutting this point also needs science knowledge.

fail. men and chimpanzees/gorillas come from same primates, bearing 98% similarity. i know what you will say, there is a 2% difference. But let say you saw two near identical empire state building side by side, but one has 1-2 storeys less. can you claim that their are very different even the structure design are exactly the same?

Fail? Be careful about making absolute statements. On the contrary, I wouldn't say that. Instead, I believe you mean similarity in genome and not intellect or appearance, and if one were to say that, does the person realise that some studies (which are non-Christian) state that genome of dogs or chicken is 95% close to man's and fish is just 80% close. All quite high? In fact that is the reason why some people think animals come from the same evolution process. So it seems atheists want to win the argument both ways?

australian aborigines have been around for ages, did they leave any traces for the archeologists to discover about their past? No! they are hunters/gathers, no major buildings were constructed that last thru' time like the great pyramid. so can you claim that they dont exist not even 500 years ago before the british discover australia?
there was an underwater city founded off the coast of okinawa, japan that backdated 11,000 years ago, check this on the net and youtube. hows that for early civilization? what about those pyramids in america and egypt? the earliest is 5000 years old. surely noah's family reproduce fast enough to repopulate the whole planet in just less than a few hundred years, and i cant believe the number of abnormalities if both Noah's sons and daughters mate with each other to reproduce! from a single family, how can there be so many races with so many genetic variations in races and regions? dont tell me! babel incident. ya, riiiiiight.

So the point is that there were millions of years, and we have an "underwater city" going far back as only 11,000 years out of millions of years. And the point being...

come on, you were an atheist before, surely you have thought of these questions before.. stop kidding yourself. i surrendered my logic to think about the bible long ago and now i had regained back. I cant believe you surrendered so late in your life. Im sure the only way that you could have go into religions is;
- you met your gf/wife who compell you to change.
- your colleague/boss hold influences over you and force you to change.
- you were raised in a religious home and your parents indoctrinate you.
- you met with some serious incidents and you had to rely on religions as logic failed you.
if you convert for circumstances 1,3,4, i fully understand. however, no one will be sane enough to walk into a church/mormon/JW and wish to be brainwashed. "oh, let me tell you about a god who create everthing in 6 days, and need a rest (why rest?). create man/woman, talking snake, whole flood, noah's family mate with each other, god kill here, there, everywhere... but still love you, prepare hell for you if you musterbate, then come back in relevation to burn everyone who didnt stroke his ego to hell! but still love you."

I think we keep falling into presuppositions. People who know my character would know I hardly constitute a conformist even from a wife. But I would say if #4 is true, God has called the weak to lean upon Him, so nothing wrong. I tend to avoid presuppositions because I could say you are reacting unusually strongly here because you want to convince yourself never to go back to Christianity. Do you like the sound of that. No. So avoid presuppositions. By the way, talking about that I am reminded that I did attend church during 6 months in 1992 (18 years ago) and took it like a full-of-doubt thing and left it. Went again in 1994 for another couple of months, same church but different evangelist, out again. I went into it in 2010 under very different circumstances, not believing in the Chinese idiom that a good horse cannot U-turn, I u-turned and turned out better this time because I certainly understood a lot more than the last episodes. As for the problem of evil, it would be the third time I would be going through if doing so again. I would prefer not to repeat as it brings the discussions in circles and get it longer and longer, although some people see it as "snaking out". Whatever we have gone through and disagreed, we disagree and move on because going back doesn't mean we will agree or anyone will be convinced.

sure, i believe you have the reasoning skills to rationalize the KCA, but surely, how did you managed to work it back to jesus? with so many religions out there, i can work it back to the su mukong, kwan yin, allah, vishu, hanuma etc? is your consideration biased or unbiased? are you swinging your justification to jesus because you are involved in it and no one else?

It's answered in the above. I won't accuse you of forcing a repeat since I am responding to two posts at once.

nothing is infinite in the universe. ask any physicists. there is a time limited to all things, they worked the age of the known universe to 13.75 billion years based on observal expansion rate of the universe and worked out by the comoslogists and physicts. why would i trust some old biblical writings backdated 3000 years ago that state the world has 4 corners, flat and float on a tortoise's back?

Nothing is infinite in the universe is exactly my point since the start.

as an ex-believer, probably i can empathized your current unflinching loyalty to the bible without batting an eye.
i recommend these two books for you to read. both are written by pastors who are skilled in the bible.
Dishonest Church. http://www.amazon.com/Dishonest-Chur.../dp/1878282077
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jes...ref=pd_sim_b_1
i know you will say why should yo read them? well, as said before, you never know how strong your tea is until you put in hot water. aka to the test.

I don't think I need to repeat that to be an atheist I need a lot of faith in atheism as well, so do not need the "I-am-ex-Xtian-have-been-there-done-that-and-it-doesn't-work-boy" positioning because that is not enough to convince that the other picture is worth the faith in. Non-faith in one doesn't mean faith in the other, but of two opposite and only available answers, one of them must be right. Sure, it doesn't harm to read those books since I often read conflicting material along those likes. I have heard of Bart Ehrman and his debates with William Lane Craig. But I thought you saw yourself as one of those giving me the strong tea, and I am still here.

Ask your pastor about the early church, the variations, the struggle and based only on historical facts, not bible. see how he respond. I strongly believe he will say; "oh the past has some errors, but have faith in god that everything is fine." what he is trying to say is; "believe what you are told, and stop bothering me with all these questions!" i had pastors telling that before, smirking when i question and they got pretty defensive and at time, hostile. Gee,, as if im trying to bust their chops.

I would say that biblical inerrancy doesn't mean the lingua satisfying all the whims of every imperfect person with all their own imperfect views and with many trying to take it to themselves to be grammar teachers, history teachers or sherlock holmes. The bible has 66 chapters and written by over 40 authors from different eras and states and yet all point to an underlying character of a personal God who created the world, to the fact that men sinned and blood atonement and the messiah who will save and many other underlying similarities of similar messages and more than mere coincidence. Buddhism, for example, had only one source - the prince of India. One part in the bible even says that no one will always be able to fully understand God due to men's shortcomings. There you have it, written by men which God would prefer to use men to deliver his message. But if the question is turned the other way - is the bible fully erroneous and does not contain not a single fact? If it contains even one fact, then it takes into serious consideration the existence of a God because all chapters talk about God. Imagine, books and books and crowds and crowds of lies and liars and yet all point to the same lie.

come on, when the conquisitors went into america, they didnt bring their faith with them? when the 8 legions went into china, they didnt take their faith with them there? have you read about the Goa inquistion from st Xavier against the indians?

Perhaps I should not gone into this because it is a red herring - if Jesus was born in China, Chinese would spread Christianity to the west - so there is point arguing over this in relation to the genuinity or falsity of Christianity or God's existence. As I repeat, a bad Christian doesn't mean God doesn't exist.

our asian culture,... sigh.. from confucius time have been rote learning and little critical thinking. even this you have to agree with us. given people like korea, the strict upbringing and rote learning style left them with very little individualistic's characters. nothing but a serfs to the society. Just like PAP and the common singaporeans. back in the 60, 70, 80 where internet didnt take shape, all media were controlled by the govt. The medias report nothing but good things about LKY and PAP.. we are worshipped them... that is until internet come about. Now MDA want to contain it.

Maybe. Can't say I disagree.

Information is power, both the churches are trying to dissuade their congregations from reading too much on the net, and so is MDA, trying to protect the PAP's power. atheism is somewhat like the arab's spring rebellion. it is time to rebel against dogmas with knowledge and rights.

Fine, but don't rebel for rebel's sake and the same advice goes to Christians as well.

i like to share this story with you; in north korea, there was this man who had cataracts in his eyes and he couldnt see for years. hospitals there were either not equipped to do this or only the privileged one can afford to get quality health care. There was this western doctor who flew in and gave free eye surgery. After he operated on him, this old man can see again!! he was happy and rejoice. and do you know who was the first one he turned to to say thanks and praise? KIM JONG IL!!! not the doctor!.. he lapsed heaps of praises, kneel and rejoice loudly in front of the great leader's poster.
like wise, when people get serious illness like cancer, they ran to the hospital to seek medical help/chemeotheraphy, but when they are healed, they gave thanks to god!.. but why seek the doctor's help if you think your faith can heal you?
back in the medival times where bubonic plague reigned, 3/4 of the europeans populations died. they were christian believers. why they have to die? before vacinnation of small pox, pencillin, and all the current medical drugs, how many people had died from pox, malaria, cholera, famine, etc? you might attribute to god's plan. but someone you knew is dying from such diseases and calamity? can you tell them that it is god's plan that they must suffer and die? or would you ask them to seek medicial science for help? i leave this to you to answer. i struggled with this for many years too and refused to face the truth.

Again, that isn't really related to my point that the most experienced think they have the best. But I don't want to attack you on that because I find that would be attacking your credbility. Till now I believe the things you went through is what you believe to be true. But thanks for the story. I can only say that the chap thanking whoever is immaterial to my believe in God. If I am a doctor and want to save lives I wouldn't care much who the person thanks if he gets well. And whoever I thank, that doesn't not mean God doesn't exist.

in addition to the above, i would like to quote part of mathew 13:13
"For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand."
there scientific facts, historical facts, logic, reasoning, common sense, comparison between fairy tales and reality, a.k.a. cognitive intelligence, everything is there... Why suspend your rational thought when it comes to religion?

It goes back to the same thing - yours is right, mine is wrong, yours is truth, mine is not, yours is good, mine is bad. Who is really guilty of not fulfilling Matthew 13:13. Also, an atheist also need to be careful in using the bible because he would be exactly guilty of selective agreement, he agrees with parts of the bible in his favour yet claims the rest tells him exactly why he should not believe in the bible. That would be the ultimate paradox.

 

[fishbuff]

i have to filter the replies to afew points as the list is getting bigger and bigger. excellent but we would like to keep it down to the important points.

The broad singular difference between Christianity and Islam or Judaism is the belief that Jesus was the Messiah. If I believe, then I am a Christian or Messianic Jew. It doesn't make sense for me to believe Jesus is God and be a Muslim. But all they are theism and I am quite unsure as to why you are interested in the differences since you aren't a theist in the first place. As for other religions, I view them as largely paganistic because they can all be traced to a storywriter. For example, Sun Wukong was written by Wu Chengen. If people went that way, they would be worshipping Optimus Prime in 100 years time. I don't invent the God that invents me.

even if you say that you believe in jesus, you are also saying that when you engaged in a belief management process, there is a strong possibility that the truth can go both way; true or false. dont you agree? i engaged now in a lack of belief, which start off every zero unless proven otherwise. for example, when i say i Dont have a billion dollars, i have very little to prove. but if someone claim that he has one billion dollar, he better come up with facts to show he does have a billion dollars.

my point also to you is this; why dont the churches teach the history of bible and early christianity? why hide it? tell it like a fact to the congregation and let them see. why keep everyone in the dark and hope no one will find out?

Kindly do not digress. My point was that animals contain properties showing even macro-evolution would not explain the differences or the complexity of life. I see the platypus with duck's beak, cobra's poison and beaver's fur and it tells me it cannot be "evoluted" from different animals. I don't see location or exclusivity of location having anything to do with the issue because we are talking about 4,000 years as you said and not 4 years. By the way, it is recorded possible that someone can walk around the earth within 10 years including sailing the seas. The only noteworthy point here was the dinosaur bones, which I attribute to the great flood. My science knowledge might be limited, but my view tells me that death doesn't give you fossils, it gives you decomposition. The issue here is that anyone rebutting this point also needs science knowledge.

why macro evolution cannot change from one species to the next? of course this will not happen in a short span of time as this has to happen over million of years. alright, if you think evolution is bad science and creationism is the right one, then why ALL the proper universities teach only evolution and only those religious colleges teach creationism?

Aha! you brought up platypus.. this creature is only found in australia and no where else (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus). did it managed to crawl into the ark, didnt reproduce until it managed to crawl all the way to eastern australia?


which one is more plausible? that creature evolve over time and adapt to the environment or, all animals went into an ark, world is flooded, ark landed on a mountain, creatures crawled out, and travel all over?

whatabout the plants and trees that were drowned? how did they reproduce? if the flood is true, the whole eco-system will be totally devastated and it will take million of years to heal.

whatabout the animals on the ark? carnivores and herbivores.. didnt the former eat the latter? the ark floated for nearly a year according to the bible, did noah' stock up all the foods tailored for them? even bamboo shoots for the panda?

the whole saltwater fish population will be decimated when so much fresh water introduced into the sea. if a specie died out, it will not be replaced. care to explain this?

come on, noah's ark is a fairy tale!

Fail? Be careful about making absolute statements. On the contrary, I wouldn't say that. Instead, I believe you mean similarity in genome and not intellect or appearance, and if one were to say that, does the person realise that some studies (which are non-Christian) state that genome of dogs or chicken is 95% close to man's and fish is just 80% close. All quite high? In fact that is the reason why some people think animals come from the same evolution process. So it seems atheists want to win the argument both ways?

i have 99% confident that the god of the gap is shrinking fast in this new age of technology and science. genetics is the blue print for all life. if god made adam from dust and from scratch, surely we wont bare 98% similarity to ape and chimpanzees but have our own set of DNA.

when Darwin published the "origin of species", he know that he will draw heaps of flakes from the religious bodies and some powerful ministers. he was the pioneer in the first field that was ever developed that will go against the church. in chapter 6 of OOS, he even casted doubts about his theory stating difficulty of selection, but that was the age where paleantology and DNA are unheard of. Now in this science age, the doubts about his theory has been exonerated.

So the point is that there were millions of years, and we have an "underwater city" going far back as only 11,000 years out of millions of years. And the point being...

you did mention civilization is only less than 5000 years old. so im showing you an example of a city that had been dated by archeologists to be at least 10,000 years old.

I think we keep falling into presuppositions. People who know my character would know I hardly constitute a conformist even from a wife. But I would say if #4 is true, God has called the weak to lean upon Him, so nothing wrong. I tend to avoid presuppositions because I could say you are reacting unusually strongly here because you want to convince yourself never to go back to Christianity. Do you like the sound of that. No. So avoid presuppositions. By the way, talking about that I am reminded that I did attend church during 6 months in 1992 (18 years ago) and took it like a full-of-doubt thing and left it. Went again in 1994 for another couple of months, same church but different evangelist, out again. I went into it in 2010 under very different circumstances, not believing in the Chinese idiom that a good horse cannot U-turn, I u-turned and turned out better this time because I certainly understood a lot more than the last episodes. As for the problem of evil, it would be the third time I would be going through if doing so again. I would prefer not to repeat as it brings the discussions in circles and get it longer and longer, although some people see it as "snaking out". Whatever we have gone through and disagreed, we disagree and move on because going back doesn't mean we will agree or anyone will be convinced.

well, as a person that wish to be a learnt man in science, nothing is absolute. as thomas said, until i can feel the hole in the hands, and see the gap at the side, i will not believe.

as you had mentioned, you had attended prostestant/catholic/pentecostal/evenjalical church again and again and from there, you derived your current faith. if you have attended a mahdrasa, you would have become a muslim or a synagogue to become a jew.

I don't think I need to repeat that to be an atheist I need a lot of faith in atheism as well, so do not need the "I-am-ex-Xtian-have-been-there-done-that-and-it-doesn't-work-boy" positioning because that is not enough to convince that the other picture is worth the faith in. Non-faith in one doesn't mean faith in the other, but of two opposite and only available answers, one of them must be right. Sure, it doesn't harm to read those books since I often read conflicting material along those likes. I have heard of Bart Ehrman and his debates with William Lane Craig. But I thought you saw yourself as one of those giving me the strong tea, and I am still here.

no, to be an atheist is like declaring i dont have a billion dollar, if i dont have a billion dollar and someone claim he has a billion dollar, then he has to prove it that he has the money. Have you heard of "Kiss Hank's Ass"? it beared similar argument of what the current belief system is.

oh william craig,. saw his argument with christopher hitchens and dawkins .. his arguments fall apart the minute he touched on the benefits of religions; "oh doesnt matter whether the tooth fairy is real or not, but see how much joy he bring to the world.". i wish he can stop making a fool of himself.

I would say that biblical inerrancy doesn't mean the lingua satisfying all the whims of every imperfect person with all their own imperfect views and with many trying to take it to themselves to be grammar teachers, history teachers or sherlock holmes. The bible has 66 chapters and written by over 40 authors from different eras and states and yet all point to an underlying character of a personal God who created the world, to the fact that men sinned and blood atonement and the messiah who will save and many other underlying similarities of similar messages and more than mere coincidence. Buddhism, for example, had only one source - the prince of India. One part in the bible even says that no one will always be able to fully understand God due to men's shortcomings. There you have it, written by men which God would prefer to use men to deliver his message. But if the question is turned the other way - is the bible fully erroneous and does not contain not a single fact? If it contains even one fact, then it takes into serious consideration the existence of a God because all chapters talk about God. Imagine, books and books and crowds and crowds of lies and liars and yet all point to the same lie.

to me, it is the survival of the fittest. in this case, religions require powerful patrons to expand. christianity has emperior constantine to expand and reverse the role to force conversion or face death throughout rome. even you cannot deny this.

not true at all about men's shortcoming. that is the typical argument that encourage intellectual laziness. churches have been capitalizing on this for years to leverage on people's ignorance.
As francis collins had said in his language of god book; "A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.".

Perhaps I should not gone into this because it is a red herring - if Jesus was born in China, Chinese would spread Christianity to the west - so there is point arguing over this in relation to the genuinity or falsity of Christianity or God's existence. As I repeat, a bad Christian doesn't mean God doesn't exist.

I don’t even think that jesus can be derived from a chinese culture as we all know that breaking out from traditionalist behaviour will get death as we were under feudal system.
But that still come back to the old question, how does anyone know god exist? I think the god’s existence can only be argued philosophically and not scientifically.

Again, that isn't really related to my point that the most experienced think they have the best. But I don't want to attack you on that because I find that would be attacking your credibility. Till now I believe the things you went through is what you believe to be true. But thanks for the story. I can only say that the chap thanking whoever is immaterial to my believe in God. If I am a doctor and want to save lives I wouldn't care much who the person thanks if he gets well. And whoever I thank, that doesn't not mean God doesn't exist.

Well, please attack my credibility and whatsoever coz If I cant test my current knowledge against difficult question, then I wont know where I have missed out and I will go and do some more research.
What im getting at is; even if your logic worked you toward a god, then why jesus if you don’t the influence from the church that you had previously attended? There are heaps of religions out there and you can choose others.

It goes back to the same thing - yours is right, mine is wrong, yours is truth, mine is not, yours is good, mine is bad. Who is really guilty of not fulfilling Matthew 13:13. Also, an atheist also need to be careful in using the bible because he would be exactly guilty of selective agreement, he agrees with parts of the bible in his favour yet claims the rest tells him exactly why he should not believe in the bible. That would be the ultimate paradox.

Hello! That is what Im trying to get at; cherry-picking! That is how all the biblical teachings have been doing. Do you believe the bible to be literal or metaphorical? Like how in the OT, god killed so many people; Canaanites, world, resident of Sodom/Gomorrah, the whole world, kill the innocent guy that touched the ark of convenant, ask jew to kill the whole town, sparing the virgins and take them for themselves.

Throughout the whole 2 decades, not a single church address why god is so murderous, cruel and vengeful. Only one teenage bible zealot dared to tell this straight to my face; “god can do this because he can.” I strongly disagree with his remark and tone to make so light consideration over a person’s death, but he spoke like a true believer.

 

[drifter]

Unfortunately for you, I have to agree that it's the case in comparison to yours.

fortunately i dont believe in your " creator " . blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence

 

[drifter]

probably he could have worn these type of shoes.
View attachment 3383

jesus is just a lizard

[video=youtube;45yabrnryXk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45yabrnryXk&feature=related[/video]

 

[Perspective]

even if you say that you believe in jesus, you are also saying that when you engaged in a belief management process, there is a strong possibility that the truth can go both way; true or false. dont you agree? i engaged now in a lack of belief, which start off every zero unless proven otherwise. for example, when i say i Dont have a billion dollars, i have very little to prove. but if someone claim that he has one billion dollar, he better come up with facts to show he does have a billion dollars.

I think that is incomplete analogy. I have no billion dollars and you do, and thinks it ends there but no. The story continues that we each bought a bungalow worth nearly a billion and signed the papers with the lawyers showing that we will both be paying in full and no loan - then that I would need explaining. I can say "It's my personal matter, none of your business where I got the money from" but if I had the large amount from an illegal source, the law would surely catch up with me. Now to translate, I can say there is no God, then it still doesn't addresses some issues I have. Comparing belief in God and non-belief, both answers some questions and doesn't answer others, but the former answers more than it doesn't while the latter answers some questions Christianity doesn't but leaves more unanswered, then I don't see anything wrong if going for the better option. All humans do - it's what they see as a better option that makes the difference. Now, I've given chances, you have rebutted rather few things of what I said but instead go on to new points or even rehashed points from 3 posts ago and you notice until now I have not lambasted you for it. But your views have been too absolute. Anything gives credence to the existence of Jesus is automatically faked. Even historians do not take it that way. Even the letters of Paul is considered historical material to them.

why dont the churches teach the history of bible and early christianity? why hide it? tell it like a fact to the congregation and let them see. why keep everyone in the dark and hope no one will find out?

History of the church is not central theme of Christianity. Pastors give brief mentions during a sermon and interested Christians can find out through reading of the Crusades and others. There is no Christian I know who doesn't disagree that Christianity can be abused or in fact still is, and they don't even need history - we can look at greedy churches preaching prosperity today. In fact, the bible exactly warns of false prophets in several places in bible and Jesus had warned of people who will speak His name in the eyes of men and yet cannot enter the Kingdom. The issue, and I am saying for the third and last time, is that bad Christians do not mean God does not exist.

why macro evolution cannot change from one species to the next? of course this will not happen in a short span of time as this has to happen over million of years. alright, if you think evolution is bad science and creationism is the right one, then why ALL the proper universities teach only evolution and only those religious colleges teach creationism?

I do not think in a million years chocolate would turn into cotton, or iron for that matter. It's totally different property. For example, how would dinosaurs become birds. By flapping its claws everyday for millions of years? And what for? As for the second point we have gone through it before. I would add that some discoveries are of late, such as the consistently expanding universe, more archaeology uncovered, more discoveries in the DNA. But deepening into the topic for us would be like two frogs in the well chatting. Because it still doesn't mean God does not exist. I teach lessons with disclaimers on yet to be undiscovered stuff in MIT or Harvard - so what?

Aha! you brought up platypus.. this creature is only found in australia and no where else (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus). did it managed to crawl into the ark, didnt reproduce until it managed to crawl all the way to eastern australia?

Is it not presumptive to assume that the platypus did not move as a community in early stages. Here, I would say creation scientists have yet to answer this question satisfactorily but strange if I have to become an atheist right away at the drop of a hat then with loopholes of atheism still there but atheists fine that I become atheist. And then Christians are accused of cherry-picking.

which one is more plausible? that creature evolve over time and adapt to the environment or, all animals went into an ark, world is flooded, ark landed on a mountain, creatures crawled out, and travel all over?
whatabout the plants and trees that were drowned? how did they reproduce? if the flood is true, the whole eco-system will be totally devastated and it will take million of years to heal.
whatabout the animals on the ark? carnivores and herbivores.. didnt the former eat the latter? the ark floated for nearly a year according to the bible, did noah' stock up all the foods tailored for them? even bamboo shoots for the panda?
the whole saltwater fish population will be decimated when so much fresh water introduced into the sea. if a specie died out, it will not be replaced. care to explain this?
come on, noah's ark is a fairy tale!

Plants and trees began to exist from nothing is plausible, but trees that were drowned is fairy tale. (Do not forget that seeds would not drown.) And a proper eco-system coming out from nothing is plausible but not eco-system after flooding. If all life went extinct they can return after millions. Are you sure? Incidentally "Life After People" documentary did not even record this "fact".

i have 99% confident that the god of the gap is shrinking fast in this new age of technology and science. genetics is the blue print for all life. if god made adam from dust and from scratch, surely we wont bare 98% similarity to ape and chimpanzees but have our own set of DNA.

This is a rather lousy point. I am not sure why you would think God is rationale as long as He made DNA very different. A strange criteria for proving God does not exist.

when Darwin published the "origin of species", he know that he will draw heaps of flakes from the religious bodies and some powerful ministers. he was the pioneer in the first field that was ever developed that will go against the church. in chapter 6 of OOS, he even casted doubts about his theory stating difficulty of selection, but that was the age where paleantology and DNA are unheard of. Now in this science age, the doubts about his theory has been exonerated.

Exonerated? Or two sides of a coin we see? Creationists would of course not buy that and further point to it not being able to explain the origin of life, but even evolutionists are disassociating evolution theory from the term "Darwinism".

you did mention civilization is only less than 5000 years old. so im showing you an example of a city that had been dated by archeologists to be at least 10,000 years old.

No, I did not. I said I was a young earth believer and young earth doesn't necessarily say 5,000 years. Some calculated to be 15,000 to 20,000.

well, as a person that wish to be a learnt man in science, nothing is absolute. as thomas said, until i can feel the hole in the hands, and see the gap at the side, i will not believe.

I note that another example you have used from the bible revealing a contradiction in your position especially when it's related to a resurrection. But anyway.

as you had mentioned, you had attended prostestant/catholic/pentecostal/evenjalical church again and again and from there, you derived your current faith. if you have attended a mahdrasa, you would have become a muslim or a synagogue to become a jew.

I think this is a simplistic point because people had converted from Islam to Christianity or the other way around, or even atheist.

not true at all about men's shortcoming. that is the typical argument that encourage intellectual laziness. churches have been capitalizing on this for years to leverage on people's ignorance. As francis collins had said in his language of god book; "A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.".

I don't see how this addresseses my point on biblical inerrancy. If you are saying that men has no shortcomings, then I disagree.

Hello! That is what Im trying to get at; cherry-picking! That is how all the biblical teachings have been doing. Do you believe the bible to be literal or metaphorical? Like how in the OT, god killed so many people; Canaanites, world, resident of Sodom/Gomorrah, the whole world, kill the innocent guy that touched the ark of convenant, ask jew to kill the whole town, sparing the virgins and take them for themselves.
Throughout the whole 2 decades, not a single church address why god is so murderous, cruel and vengeful. Only one teenage bible zealot dared to tell this straight to my face; “god can do this because he can.” I strongly disagree with his remark and tone to make so light consideration over a person’s death, but he spoke like a true believer.

Christians believe that the bible is true, that is OPPOSITE from cherry-picking. You are confused. I face all the stuff in the bible starkly and squarely even if it is unpopular. I do not think that is cherry-picking compared to agreeing with some, disagreeing with others when the book declares that it is inerrant and the person who uses it does not think so.

 

[fishbuff]

if you can, spend some time to watch this documentary from nova. im too tired to reply today, had been doing bushwalking on sat and driving 5 hours across mountain ranges to reach the top of the national park.

i will take a r

[video=youtube;x2xyrel-2vI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2xyrel-2vI[/video]